Mr President, with regard to the Sixth Environment Action Programme I would first of all like to offer thanks to the ‘shadow rapporteurs’ of the various Parliamentary groups for their fine cooperation. This cooperation with the ‘shadow rapporteurs’ has meant that the voting agenda, at least, looks very different than in the first reading: we have concentrated exclusively on the most important amendments. I hope that this fine cooperation will also continue in the voting tomorrow. The Commission, too, has been a good cooperation partner: we have held a great many discussions. Our special thanks go to Sweden, which acted as President during the first reading. The main objective of the programme, of course, is to integrate environmental policy with the other sectors of policy. In this respect this forms a continuation to the Fifth Environmental Action Programme, but in the course of this integration we must attain concrete objectives and actual results, and then we will also need structural amendments, for example to the Commission's own actions. The objective of integration is of course that the environmental aspect be taken into consideration in the various policy sectors themselves. Special emphasis must be given to the areas of energy policy, transport policy, agriculture and fishing, since these are the most difficult areas from the point of view of the environment. The future agricultural reform must take steps in the direction of more sustainable procedures, and the new instruments for improving the state of the environment must incorporate a clear focusing of the EU's aid policy on the environmental aspect. The conflict which presently reigns over subsidies from the environmental point of view must be eliminated. An inventory should be established of environmentally-damaging subsidies, and these must be phased out by 2010 at the latest. Money, incidentally, can act as a fine consultant, and in this spirit environmentally-related and energy taxes (for example) must also be developed. I am also very pleased that here in Parliament we have been able to give very broad approval to the idea that environmentally-related taxation needs to be developed also at EU level. Qualitative and quantitative objectives, and timetables, must be set for the most important environmental problems. This has been a very contentious question: the Commission has not supported this, and the Council also has doubts. My own opinion is that in this type of programme it is very important to understand those requirements which are to be placed on decision-making from the environmental point of view. By setting objectives and by dividing them sensibly over time periods, we will make it possible for political decision-makers to understand, at any given future stage, what sort of decisions must be made in the situation at hand. In my opinion these objectives are required, in particular, as instruments for directing policy. The Commission proposes thematic strategies, which will subsequently guide the environmental policy of the future. The Commission suggests six; Parliament has added an urban thematic initiative, and this has been very largely approved. The thematic strategies must be approved using the codecision procedure. In my opinion this is quite self-evident, since it is through these strategies that we will be directing environmental policy in its crucial aspects. As I stated, there are very few amendments; but I would like to say a few words about one of them. This is the amendment by the European Liberal and Democratic Party group concerning rejection of the common position. In my opinion this will not be of any benefit to this matter, nor do I understand its content; it is only by improving the common position that we will bring about improvements in European environmental policy.

Political group: PSE