Mr President, Commissioner, why do we need a European directive on efficiency for fluorescent lighting? We use 130 million such lights in the 15 Member States of the EU every year, especially in office buildings, where two-thirds of the light is currently provided by fluorescent lighting. Following on from the Rio Conference in 1992, the EU Commission carried out a study into what specific steps could be introduced in our countries in order to protect the climate. It emerged that one of the cheapest measures in the EU would be to increase the efficiency of fluorescent lighting. These lights are on for ten hours a day, five to seven days a week, 50 weeks of the year for several years, meaning that even a slight improvement in efficiency of just three or five watts would make a huge difference to energy consumption over the years. The EU Commission started negotiations with CELMA, the association which represents manufacturers of lighting systems and, in 1996, it drafted a study in order to have a scientific basis for a decision. This 1996 study took account of several scenarios. The most efficient scenario, where all magnetic ballasts would be withdrawn at some point from the market and the best available technology, i.e. electronic ballasts, which already account for 20% of the market, would, at some point, supply the entire market, would mean savings of 250 terawatt hours, i.e. 250 billion kilowatt hours throughout the EU. I am from Luxembourg. The entire consumption of electricity in Luxembourg, for industry, residential customers and office buildings, is 6 terawatt hours per annum. In other words, this directive would enable us to save twice the entire electricity consumption of Luxembourg. In other words, it is not quite as irrelevant as it might appear at first glance. The Commission presented a proposal in 1999. This proposal falls below the minimum scenario in the study which it itself commissioned in 1996. That is because not all magnetic ballasts will be phased out consistently; some would remain on the market, and we would save 100 billion kilowatt hours less over coming years. Parliament therefore needs to improve the Commission’s proposal. There are ecological arguments which I have already mentioned. There is also a technical and financial argument. The industry itself has tried to use the Commission’s present paper to estimate what investment signals are being given to the ballast market. It has ascertained that, in 5-8 years’ time, 50% of ballasts would be the best magnetic ballasts, i.e. we are actually sending the market the wrong signal. Instead of ensuring that all investments are channelled into the best available technology, i.e. electronic ballasts, a large part of the investments would only go to the second best technology. So it is not hard to imagine that, if the industry invests in the second best technology over the next 3-4 years, it will object even more in 5-6 years, when we undertake a review, than it does today to reversing investments which it has only just made. A word on the international background: the USA plans to phase out all magnetic ballasts by 2010. Our proposal, and here I should like to thank the shadow rapporteurs of the other parties, Mrs McNally, Mr Rovsing and Mr Beysen, would simply be adopting what is already on the agenda in the USA.

Political group: Verts-ALE