Mr President, first of all I would like to thank Mr Chichester for his report and for his proposals. This will certainly not be the last debate on environment and energy policy that we have in this House. However this report has enabled us to make some headway. Had we been conducting this debate 10 or 20 years ago then there would have been very different things at the forefront of our minds. We would have been discussing sulphur dioxide, nitric oxide or dust. We have achieved a number of successes in this area in the course of the last few years, I am very glad to say. Europe’s air quality has improved and a whole range of initiatives has been set in train in those areas where there is still room for improvement. The biggest problem in this respect is still posed by Eastern Europe of course, i.e. those countries wishing to join the European Union, and we ought not to disregard this problem in my view. Furthermore, we ought not to forget that some of these qualitative improvements were achieved purely on account of the fact that gas replaced coal, although just how beneficial this was is a moot point. In any case, this change and new technologies have definitely enabled us to improve the air quality and indeed this point has been made in the report as well. Mr Mombauer rightly pointed out – at least this is what I understood him to mean – that without a doubt, the internal market we have now created requires certain efforts to be made on the part of the Member States. But it also requires the European Union to come up with framework directives, that is a framework in which competition can take place under environmentally friendly conditions. That is the new task which the European Union has in store for it. And so we need there to be more, not less concerted EU action in this area. Secondly, I would like to point out that, as far as we are able to predict, the fossil energy sources, that is coal, oil and gas, will predominate for a long time to come in Europe alone, to say nothing of the rest of the world. In other words, if we want to improve the quality of the air, if we want to tackle the greenhouse effect then we must also continue to focus heavily on combating these effects, which are caused by burning fossil fuels. Unfortunately we do not discuss this nearly enough, but it really is still the case that improved burning technologies – and energy-saving devices too, incidentally, but above all improved burning technologies – offer the best chance of success in this area. I believe that when it comes to research, there is still a great deal we can do here to increase effectiveness. The fuel cell is certain to be of benefit to us in the years to come and the same goes for the combined heat and power system. These technologies, which are highly effective, must be promoted, possibly by means of taxation if market forces alone do not do the trick. I also believe that it is very important, when it comes to energy policy, to do more in the way of galvanising individual citizens into action and making use of their powers of imagination. It is worthwhile having citizens come up with initiatives in the field of energy policy. They stimulate individuals‘ imagination and also their willingness to take risks. There is a whole host of examples of initiatives that have been pursued in villages or towns, or by individual groups, which have led to a great deal of energy being saved or to new technologies being implemented more rapidly than is usually the case. We should prize such things highly. On a final note though, I would like to mention two phenomena not directly associated with the European Union but with the world climate. Some of you may have read that in China there are such phenomena as smouldering fires. Huge quantities of coal burn and smoulder. Some of these smouldering fires occur naturally and some are started by people. They produce enormous amounts of CO2, far more than the amount we are cutting down by over here. The second phenomenon concerns the burning of what is known as associated gas, in Russia and also in the Near East. Quantities of CO2 are released in these countries that vastly exceed the amounts we have cut down by here in Europe in the course of the last few years. As such, incidentally, larger quantities of gas are being burnt than we import from Russia. I would just like to draw your attention to this phenomenon. This calls for more than just a report. What is really needed here is for policy to be developed as well, perhaps even at the highest level. I felt it was imperative that I refer to this phenomenon once again.

Political group: PSE