Mr President, right at the start I wish to thank my colleague, Guido Sacconi, for his excellent levels of cooperation in drawing up the report we are discussing. The fact that we can hopefully conclude the debate on the directive at first reading shows that the European Union wants to work seriously to slow down climate change. There has been excellent cooperation between the Commission, the Council and Parliament, and I believe Mr Sacconi’s personal input has been important in this. The Kyoto Protocol lays down the obligations of the Parties to report on emissions. The decision on reporting in the EU, which goes back 10 years, has been an important basis for allowing us to reliably verify any negative trend with regard to emissions and create a framework to reverse that trend. It does not, however, adequately meet the obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. In terms of accuracy and the way it is divided up, current reporting practice does not correspond, for example, to the way it should be divided up according to category of activity under the directive on emissions trading, which was adopted by the EU in the summer. Furthermore, there have been major omissions in the work of Member States and information that has either not been submitted or is inadequate has had to be supplemented by making the necessary calculations. With the text now to be adopted the quality and accuracy of reporting will improve significantly. At the same time the intention is to rationalise how frequently information is submitted by distinguishing between annual and periodical reporting. Under the so-called compromise package Parliament’s rapporteur, the shadow rapporteurs and the Council have agreed between themselves that Member States must establish national inventory systems as soon as possible, and in any case no later than the end of 2005, for the estimation of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases by source. Compliance with the Kyoto agreements – both the setting of absolute targets and monitoring their achievement – obviously depends very much on how the inventory system is brought into operation. It is, of course, regrettable that there are not any guarantees of it being in operation when the first allocation with regard to emissions trading is made in the Member States. It will be important to adopt the grand total of 48 amendments contained in the compromise package in tomorrow’s vote so that the Member States can start to prepare for national implementation without delay. I wish in this connection to express one small hope. Under the Kyoto Protocol emissions in the first Kyoto commitment period will be examined on the basis of a five-year average. I would hope that the Community, for example the European Environment Agency, will also start to publish trends in emissions on the basis of a five-year average. That way we would eliminate, for example, differentials resulting from annual fluctuations in temperatures and rainfall when assessing how far the Community and the Member States are from the target. Present practice gives cause for unwarranted optimism and unwarranted pessimism, which can be hard to understand for the public at large.

Political group: PPE-DE