Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it was, at first, only people in Germany who had to endure what was termed deposits on cans but ought, more accurately to be termed the enforced deposit. Now people throughout Europe are being sore tried by the amateurish approach adopted in Germany, and so the European People’s Party has supported the Liberal group’s request to have this oral question put on Parliament’s agenda. Commissioner Bolkestein was right to reveal on television that those of us who live in Germany are currently in a state of chaos as a result of the deposit imposed on cans. Five different systems currently operate across Germany to administer this deposit, but they cover only some 10% of the overall German market. Alongside them there are the so-called individual systems, operating on a regional basis or limited to particular chains of supermarkets, but, as these do not constitute a self-sufficient whole, their effect is to wholly fragment the can deposit system. Such a result was only to be expected. I do not want to say anything about the discrimination against certain German firms within Germany, as that is not – unfortunately – a pan-European issue, but is for the Bundestag in Berlin to deal with. I just want to say something about the discrimination that is going on in Europe. Article 28 obliges every Member State to guarantee free trade, and this article is being quite openly breached. The Commission has received masses of complaints, especially from small and medium-sized businesses, and, in particular, from those based in the Benelux countries, Italy, France and Austria. Quite apart from these complaints, there has also been a great deal of disruption in Germany. It is estimated that German consumers have lost some EUR 500 million through having had to pay a deposit somewhere or other, but not having had the opportunity to cash in their deposit tokens at the same place later on and thus get their deposit back. You – any consumer – can easily get practical experience of this. All you need to do is to buy a drink at a service station and then drive off. If you never go back to that service station, you will never be able to return the can or bottle that you bought there and will never get back the deposit that you paid on it. That is how, in only a few months, the consumer ends up with a loss of EUR 500 million. In Germany, the estimate loss in terms of jobs alone amounts to 10 000, all lost as a result of this incompetence. I might add that I have not invented these figures or been given them by some organisation or other; they come from the German Federal Ministry of the Economy, which is part of the same Federal Government that has to take responsibility for all these goings-on. It is reckoned that this nonsense will cost a further 15 000 jobs across the EU. All this leads us to welcome the Commission’s decision to commence, today, proceedings against the Federal Republic of Germany for infringement of the Treaties. It is evident, by the way, that the celebrated telephone conversations between Brussels and Berlin have been ineffective and that the Chancellor’s phone call to Mr Prodi has obviously availed him nothing. Perhaps that has something to do with our getting this oral question onto Parliament’s agenda for this evening, and this evening’s deliberations have perhaps accelerated the Commission’s thinking processes and steered them closer to Commissioner Bolkestein’s proposals. This is very much to be welcomed. I do not want to deny that I, myself, am fundamentally sceptical about the idea of a deposit on cans. If there is a political decision at national level to introduce a deposit on cans, then Europe will have to accept it, but the nation in question will have to get it right. There are examples of how to do it properly. There are can deposit systems in Scandinavia, but they are unitary systems with a standardised returns facility, and do not have a discriminatory effect. To put it quite bluntly, the German federal government is faced with the choice of either introducing such a system taking the necessary actions by means of regulations or legislation in Germany, or of simply doing away with the deposit on cans. Such are the two alternatives before it. If it does not do so, it risks not only ending up before the European Court of Justice in infringement proceedings set in motion by the Commission, but also faces the risk that aggrieved parties in the persons of businesses, manufacturers and even consumers will act on the more recent case-law of the European Court of Justice and commence public liability proceedings against it before German courts, which could then petition the ECJ for a preliminary ruling, with the possibility of claims running into millions, if not billions, in compensation, for which sums the German Minister of Finance would be liable. That I would regard as a highly problematic situation, and so I can do no other that advise the German Federal Government to comply with the Commission’s instructions and either create a system compatible with the internal market or abolish the deposit on cans. This morning, I publicly urged the Commission, to help the German consumer, the manufacturers and the importers. I am glad that it has done so. This question is intended, above all, to support the Commission in its efforts at finally sorting out the chaos that this has brought to Germany.

Political group: PPE-DE