Mr President, Commissioner Barnier, you have described the situation in very clear terms, and I was glad that you, as a former environment minister, also pointed out that disasters do not happen on their own. I respect the calls for solidarity that Members from the countries particularly affected are quite naturally making. They are right to do so. Members from countries such as France, Portugal, and other countries in south-eastern Europe, are right to call for solidarity, but – and let me make this quite clear – I would not want us to limit our present discussion to whether it is 31 million, 90 million or 120 million that we need in order to repair the damage, for it is equally apparent – and you, Mr Barnier, have also made it very clear – that we are patching things up. If we do not want to carry on patching things up year after year, we have to give some thought to the causes. Another reason why we have to think about the causes is that we will, at some point, exhaust our capacity for making good the damage. As of next year, we will have twenty-five Member States. This will not double the Budget, and disasters will keep on happening – floods, storms, heatwaves and fires, in varying sequences, and, as you have observed, Mr Barnier, this has something to do with climate change. Nobody is now left unaware of that. Are we, though, prepared to act consistently with what we know? Let me say bluntly that no, we are not. We, all of us, are unprepared, and we are in fact unwilling to listen to something so uncomfortable. Here in the European Union, we are far from creating the conditions in which the Kyoto criteria can be fulfilled. At present, only three Member States – Germany, Great Britain and Sweden – are getting anywhere near it. At the moment, we are at most complying with half the Kyoto criteria, by cutting back on gases that have a detrimental effect upon the climate, causing, for example, global warming, due to greenhouse gases, which occur in agriculture and in waste disposal but especially, in the areas of energy and transport. We are not prepared to take action and to be consistent when it comes to changing the underlying causes. Road traffic is constantly increasing, and we know that it is one of the principal sources of greenhouse gases, and is so to an increasing extent. At the moment, road traffic accounts for some 20% of total emissions, and in 2010, the deadline for getting in line with the Kyoto Protocol, the figure will be 28%. So you see that we may well be talking about disasters, but we are unwilling to do anything to prevent them. What I am putting before you is utterly sober fact. You will not be surprised when I say that we never, of course, set our sights high in matters of environmental policy. I have now been an MEP for more or less fourteen years, in which time I have been involved in environmental policy, but I also know perfectly well where we all stand when it comes to passing real legislation. What happens when we talk in terms of taxing kerosene, the fuel used in aircraft? What will happen if we tell Mr Barnier to strictly limit structural funding to such things as rail transport or action that benefits the environment? I’d like to hear what our counterparts in the stricken countries have to say about this! Once and for all, we have to create incentives to do such things as getting traffic off the roads and onto rails, using preferential treatment, rewards, and also sanctions, although it is the sanctions that this House never wants. It also means, for example, that we reduce emissions from industry, that we take action to improve controls, that we tax activities that do harm. What did we do at the beginning of this year when there was talk of taxing the generation of energy? We funked it. The Council funked it, and again, we all chickened out. Although the Commission has, to some degree, gone on ahead, we all, again and again, find ourselves influenced by what we term the needs of our electoral districts, where there is industry that does not want influence exerted on it, that produces chemicals – which do matter! – that produces pesticides, and we have to use them. None of us, then, really wants to do anything, but every year, once summer or autumn is over, we stand up in this House and talk about disasters. Let me mention, in addition to that, the report I have read in the press to the effect that the chairman of the French old people’s homes association has said that there are four times as many staff in German old people’s homes. That appals me; it is quite shocking, for German old people’s homes are generally in a disastrous state. It follows that we in the European Union must also, at long last, put solidarity into practice in social services. We have to lay down once and for all what standards apply to people who live in the European Union. How then are they to live with dignity in old people’s homes, and what is the situation with health insurance? As you are aware, I wanted the constitution to give the European Union clear competences in health policy. We did not manage to do that. They did not manage to do that. It looks as if we did not want it; that is something I regret. If, though, we are talking about disasters, that means, on the one hand, carrying out repairs and helping our counterparts in the countries concerned, but it also, above all, means preventing these things from happening again, and that I also ask you to do in future. (Applause)

Political group: PSE