Mr President, it is nearly three years since the Commission tabled a proposal for a directive amending the rules on the emission of pollutants from large combustion plants. After those three years, we have this week finally reached completion of this – what I believe to be – very important dossier. Nobody will blame me for saying that we have travelled an arduous road, a road that has also been peppered with painful experiences. We have met with a great deal of opposition, not only on the part of a number of Member States, but also among some fellow MEPs. There have been strong warnings and protests from interested parties, also from the electricity industry in some Member States. Despite this, we managed to amend without any problem the original regulation in the form it was submitted and which, in my opinion – and that shared by a few fellow MEPs – was far too weak. After all, the technical possibilities are not lacking, and in a large number of the EU Member States, those rules which we incorporated at first reading have long since been prescribed and form part of regular policy. The original Commission proposal to amend the directive from 1998 was, according to the majority of this House, not a huge success. Regulation was too weak and moreover, existing plants were excluded from the directive’s scope. We as the European Parliament have collectively given real significance to the environmental policy, and I should once again like to extend a warm thanks to all the fellow MEPs who contributed to this. We have demonstrated what it means if we really want to do something about this filthy air pollution, which is so harmful to people. We as Parliament made great improvements to emission standards at first reading, and we also brought existing combustion plants within the scope of the directive. Then came the Council’s collective standpoint. This was arrived at with the greatest difficulty, it has to be said. Legislation was tightened up to some extent, but the European Parliament’s wish for existing combustion plants to be brought within the scope of the directive was accommodated. But alas, each country stipulated its own exceptions, and had it been up to the Council of Ministers, we would have continued using old, outdated polluting plants ad infinitum. In our opinion, the common position lacked all vision. It had become a pick-and-mix with something for everyone. If I compare this with the regulations which currently apply in Japan and the United States, we, who all want things to be done just so, would have cut a very poor figure with the Council’s emission regulations during the discussions on Kyoto. There were calls that it was not necessary to prescribe regulations for combustion plants because this was to be addressed by Mrs Myller’s very fine report on emission ceilings, and that there was therefore no need to interfere as a European authority until those emission ceilings were in place, for everything was to be regulated on that basis, every Member State adopting them as a binding measure. But things on that front too ultimately took a different turn. If we were to meet the expectations of those in favour of liberalising the energy market, in other words, if we did not prescribe any regulations or if we agreed to exceptions in order to generate electricity using old, polluting power stations, we believe that the market mechanism would be disrupted, and those who neglect the environment would be rewarded with a head-start, because they would be able to charge lower energy prices with their old power stations. Since the Council refused to accept Parliament’s amendments, we had to resort to conciliation, whereby the present report was combined with the report by Mrs Riitta Myller. I would like to thank her too. She proved to be an excellent partner in those negotiations. In fact, during the trilogue with the Swedish Presidency and the Commission in May and June of this year, considerable progress was made straight away where the emission reduction of SO2, sulphur dioxide and a number of major technical topics were concerned. As for NOx and the nitrogen oxides, progress was only made with the greatest difficulty. At the trilogue, agreement was reached provisionally on the Commission’s obligation to extend monitoring – for which we have Mr Hans Blokland to thank – to include emissions of heavy metals. In addition, the Council met Parliament half-way and deleted certain exceptions, especially for certain plants which are fired with solid fuels and native brown coal. Unfortunately, during the first meeting, we failed to reach genuine agreement on what strikes me as the most important point, namely NOx. After first reading, we made huge progress when the Council agreed to allow old plants to be brought within the scope of the directive. That was important because those old plants are often least efficient in terms of energy, and also emit a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gases. By means of the compromise achieved by conciliation, the European Parliament managed to tighten the proposed limits for SO2 and NOx. The Council agreed, straight away in fact, to a considerable reduction in SO2, especially for the medium-size and large combustion plants, for that is where it matters most. With regard to NOx emissions, we as Parliament upheld the reduction of NOx limits for large combustion plants between 650 mg per cubic metre and 200 mg for those plants which run on solid fuels. These limits, however, only apply from 2016 to new and existing plants. That is, in fact, too late. As I stated earlier, a number of Member States introduced these standards some three years ago. We did not object to this for it marked a huge step forward, also in view of the fact that this is an important condition which we will soon be able to apply to the candidate countries. Furthermore, we managed to reduce the exception which the Council wanted for peak-load power stations, with the result that the polluting emission can be curtailed in this respect too. All in all, I am therefore of the opinion that conciliation produced a satisfactory agreement and that we went much further than we deemed possible at second reading. I thank the Swedish Presidency. I thank all my fellow MEPs, especially Mrs Myller. I thank the Commission for its constructive support. I would therefore recommend, also on behalf of the delegation, that this proposal be adopted.

Political group: PPE-DE