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You are here : Home > News > Press Releases > April 2005 > Jeannot Krecké : "The Competitiveness Council has addressed the problem of the reduction in emissions for the first, but certainly not for the last, time"
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Press Release
Jeannot Krecké : "The Competitiveness Council has addressed the problem of the reduction in emissions for the first, but certainly not for the last, time"

Date of release : 18-04-2005

Policy area : Competitiveness (Internal market, Industry and Research) Competitiveness (Internal market, Industry and Research)

Event : Competitiveness Council


On 18 April, the Minister for the Economy and current chairman of the "Competitiveness" Council, Jeannot Krecké, reviewed the discussions on the challenges of the Kyoto protocol held between the Ministers of the Economy during an informal dinner on the previous day. The debate was fuelled by a presentation by Dr Ewringmann, Director of the "Finanzwissenschaftliches Forschungsinstitut" at the University of Cologne, on the consequences of Kyoto and especially of post-Kyoto. Jeannot Krecké said:

"You know that we have ambitious objectives, which have been reiterated in the conclusions of the European Council. We wanted to evaluate the consequences of these climate changes and of the reductions in emissions that we wish to achieve.

For the Ministers of the Economy, this was basically an awareness exercise concerning these consequences. Now, some of us were surprised that our expert was able to provide concrete figures on the results that we will achieve by 2012, qualified by the expert as "a catastrophe as they currently stand". We are very far from attaining the concrete objectives that we had set ourselves.

That is why the expert tried to extrapolate on the consequences in post-Kyoto terms, using the expected growth of the models developed by the OECD. We were struck by what we heard. We immediately decided that this basically political subject that had been handled by our colleagues at the Environment should also constitute part of our discussions.

We would like the economy and industry, in particular, to implement the reductions needed to achieve these objectives. We have noticed that many governments have forgotten other important players in this domain, including transport and private consumption.

We have tried to see what solutions can be adopted and combined with eco-innovation in the near future. We believe that eco-efficiency could be one of the key factors for improved results and participate in re-launching growth, which is currently insufficient. It should be said that these far from encouraging results have occurred at a time when our growth is not very high, while we need to extrapolate the growth that we need to achieve, that is 3 to 4% growth, which we have not seen in recent years.

Through its Commissioner, Piebalgs, the Commission has said that energy efficiency will be one of the priorities. I think that it will have the full support of the Competitiveness Council, since here we have the possibility of moving in the direction of protecting nature, while developing innovative economic activities.

We have also realised that, in our negotiations, and in particular at G7 and G8 level, we should let other countries, including the United States, know that they must be part of this group of countries that is determined to show the way forward and that certain industrial countries must not fail to do the same. The EU wants to show the way, which is highly laudable, but we cannot avoid reaching the conclusion that in 2020 we will be responsible for 13% of CO2 emissions.  At that time, all other countries, and especially the developing countries, will have the highest level of emissions. We need to tell them now that they must introduce innovative changes that will lead to reductions in emissions and make them realise the global impact that this problem will have. This is an issue that we have addressed for the first, but certainly not for the last, time."


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This page was last modified on : 19-04-2005

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