Mr President, Representative of the Council Hassi and Commissioner, I believe that most of us were very pleased indeed when, as early as at the hearings of the Commissioners, we learned that one of Commissioner Wallström’s priority areas was work to combat climate change. I believe that this is an environmental issue of a kind to which the majority of citizens and the broad general public can also feel committed because people do in fact feel real anxiety faced with the climate changes that are under way. All the environmental disasters that we have witnessed make us reflect more often upon the world we are living in, and also upon our own influence on it. The problem is scarcely one of people’s not being aware of climate change. What is in fact missing, however, is the concrete implementation of measures to combat this. We are constantly knocked off course whenever we try to move on in our discussions. Many are the conferences in which the world’s leaders have convened in order to find a common strategy, but so far relatively few concrete measures have been taken. This is not perhaps so odd after all, because climate change is not, of course, the only issue in the world which needs to be solved. Famine, poverty and injustice in the way in which burdens are distributed remain acute problems in many parts of the world. In other parts – the richer part of the world, our own part of it – we ourselves find it hard to give up our well-being in order to get to grips with the problems. These become ever more complex, and decisions are conspicuous by their absence. Just as Mr Liese said, we were not perhaps expecting too much progress at the latest COP Conference in Bonn, but it would still of course have been desirable for the EU, the United States and everyone else to have achieved a more constructive result than was actually achieved. This is also why we are tabling this resolution, by means of which we want to speed up developments. We are convinced that more must happen more quickly, both in the individual Member States of the European Union, but also of course worldwide. In the future, we also want to be an instigative force within the Union in order to ensure that more in fact happens. We therefore support the wish expressed by the European Union to the effect that the Protocol should come into force by the year 2002. We also consider that, even if the decision to ratify the Protocol is a long time coming in certain countries, this should not prevent us from seriously considering the possibility of ratifying the Protocol alongside those who have made up their minds anyway. We may possibly be in danger of leaving behind someone who does not dare to take up a definite position, but we must nevertheless try to go forwards. In this regard, I should like, nonetheless, to ask Mrs Wallström and Mrs Hassi, who are present in the Chamber, for their opinions regarding our Amendment No 2 in which we demand that we should ratify the Protocol at the latest during COP 6. What will this entail? Will it entail the EU as a Union ratifying the Protocol? Or does it mean that we believe that every individual Member State will also ratify it by this date? I am pleased that Commissioner Wallström and Representative of the Council Hassi emphasised that nuclear power is not a sustainable energy source.

Political group: PSE