What Bas spoke about.

13

Nov

2024

EN Speech

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The devastating floods in Spain, the urgent need to support the victims, to improve preparedness and to fight the climate crisis (debate)

Madam President, more than 200 people died. That should be the focus of this debate. It feels as if I'm in the Spanish Parliament, where we are blaming each other instead of sincerely looking at the victims of this disaster, and that should be the core of this debate. Some people said it, and after 30 seconds it was a political play and a political game. That is not honouring the victims. What is …

8

Oct

2024

EN Speech

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Preparation of the European Council of 17-18 October 2024 (debate)

Mr President, maybe I have to break a bit with this kind of repetition of arguments that we now see basically in the upcoming Council. Charles Michel even couldn't come to Strasbourg to celebrate his last Council, and if you read the draft conclusions, I think you can see that these are his last Council meetings, because there is no inspiration, there's no energy. It's a repetition of empty words,…

17

Sep

2024

EN Speech

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The future of European competitiveness (debate)

Madam President, dear colleagues, we don't have to look far for an industry in crisis. In the heart of Europe, 3 000 workers building state-of-the-art electric vehicles are possibly losing their jobs at Audi Brussels. This is not an incident, but a key example of the fundamental challenge Europe's industry is facing. For decades, Europe has disregarded its industrial policy, closing its eyes for t…

24

Apr

2024

EN Speech

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The attack on climate and nature: far right and conservative attempts to destroy the Green Deal and prevent investment in our future (topical debate)

Mr President, thank you. And also, thank you for the applause before I even spoke. Last Monday, this Monday, it was Earth Day 2024, and also, again, the European State of the Climate Report has been published and it is full of very clear messages: 2023 was the warmest year on record; again, the average sea surface temperature across Europe was the highest on record; the Alps, which have seen glaci…

23

Apr

2024

EN Speech

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Effective coordination of economic policies and multilateral budgetary surveillance - Speeding up and clarifying the implementation of the excessive deficit procedure – amending Regulation - Requirements for budgetary frameworks of the Member States – amending Directive (joint debate – Economic governance)

Mr President, we are in a position of a crucial decade for investments within Europe. Talking about the Green Deal and our competitiveness that we had in the previous discussion. Investments are crucial for European competitiveness and, if we look around the world, Europe is lagging behind. On defence, a lot of our colleagues are also pressing investments in defence. We need to build up Ukraine, w…

22

Apr

2024

EN Speech

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Order of business

Madam President, this proposal was, of course, being published on a late Friday by the Commission as a simplification of the CAP proposal. This is being brought by some of you as one of the big ways of alleviating pressure on our farmers. We more see it as, on a last minute, even with some legal unclarity and legal questions by the Legal Service on an urgent procedure to really simplify a CAP proc…

10

Apr

2024

EN Speech

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Order of business

Madam President, we Greens really deplore this decision to go into an urgency procedure on this proposal by the Commission. This will undermine our democratic procedures. We have discussed, colleagues, for years, the CAP proposal. For years. And we approved it as a Parliament, by the way. You approved it as a Parliament. We Greens voted against the CAP because it’s an unjust and unfair system. The…

13

Mar

2024

EN Speech

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Type-approval of motor vehicles and engines with respect to their emissions and battery durability (Euro 7) (debate)

Mr President, colleagues, Commission, thank you, we are standing here for a pretty disappointing deal, to be very honest. We all know that the most effective way of dealing with pollution is source policies – making sure that at the source, we are reducing it, and we are hardly doing that in this deal. First of all, and this is a question to the Commission on the cars, or the light duty vehicles: …

12

Mar

2024

EN Speech

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EU climate risk assessment, taking urgent action to improve security and resilience in Europe (debate)

Madam President, first of all, thank you, Commissioner, for your presentation and also for the communication. I think it’s a good summary of the EEA report of yesterday. So it’s great that the Commission has made that summary. But to be very honest, I would have expected a bit more of a political document from the Commission as a response to the EEA’s report. But maybe I was having the wrong expec…

26

Feb

2024

EN Speech

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European Central Bank – annual report 2023 (debate)

Mr President, Madam President Lagarde, I have the feeling we are thrown back into time if I hear some of my colleagues who are talking about economic policies. Yes, we need a lot of investment. Europe needs a lot of investment. And indeed, policies need to be aligned with that. And I think it was very good, Madam Lagarde, that you were also pointing out that Europe needs investments. And I think, …

6

Feb

2024

EN Speech

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EU2040 climate target (debate)

Mr President, first of all, thank you to the Commission for this communication. Now to those who are now so surprised by it: first of all, we have international negotiations. Already in 2015, in the Paris Agreement, it was very clearly promised that every five years we needed a continuous debate for our targets later on. So, in 2015, when everyone was applauding Paris, you knew that between 2023 a…

5

Feb

2024

EN Speech

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Order of business

Madam President, I think the reason for the request is quite clear: we are seeing droughts all over Europe happening. The climate crisis is hitting us as we speak, and I think we as Europe need to really be better in our water strategy on that. I know that other political groups have also come up with this item, so this title from us is an attempt to bring the different ideas together, and therefo…

15

Jan

2024

EN Speech

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Ozone depleting substances - Fluorinated gases regulation (joint debate - Gas emissions)

Mr President, first of all I would like to thank everyone for contributing to the debate. It seems we have a solid majority for the vote tomorrow, and I'm really very thankful to the shadows and all the colleagues who contributed. So thanks very much for that. I just have to say that some colleagues expressed some criticism, but I had the feeling that this was more for their own YouTube channel th…

15

Jan

2024

EN Speech

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Ozone depleting substances - Fluorinated gases regulation (joint debate - Gas emissions)

Mr President, we are tomorrow going to vote on the revision of the F-Gas Regulation, which indeed I think is a very good example of a regulation that is improving our circumstances for our environment, but at the same time improving European competitiveness and European industry. First of all, I really would like to thank all the shadows for their negotiations and their support, and of course also…

21

Nov

2023

EN Speech

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Strengthening the CO2 emission performance targets for new heavy-duty vehicles (A9-0313/2023 - Bas Eickhout) (vote)

Mr President, I thank colleagues for this interesting vote – very tight vote sometimes, but we made it. So I want to thank everyone, especially the shadows, and I would like to ask now for referral back to the committee for immediate start of interinstitutional negotiations, according to Rule 59(4).…

21

Nov

2023

EN Speech

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Strengthening the CO2 emission performance targets for new heavy-duty vehicles (debate)

Mr President, first of all, I would like to thank all my colleagues and certainly, of course, specifically our shadows for the very good discussions we had and also the exchange of views we had today in this plenary. And I really would like to thank everyone for that. Just saying that in some of the contributions sometimes, well, the truth is bent to a large extent, I would say, to the level even …

21

Nov

2023

EN Speech

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Strengthening the CO2 emission performance targets for new heavy-duty vehicles (debate)

Mr President, thank you, colleagues. That was an interesting debate on pesticides. We now shift to heavy duty vehicles, trucks and buses. And also there we have some delegate issues on the table where hopefully we can stick to the facts. That would also be very nice in the debate we are going to have. First of all, on CO2 standards for trucks and buses, I think it is very important to realise that…

20

Nov

2023

EN Speech

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UN Climate Change Conference 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (COP28) (debate)

Madam President, today’s emissions gap report is indicating again that the world is on track, with the current pledges that we have seen, towards a warming of 2.5 to 2.9 degrees, which is double what we have promised the world. So, this COP is very crucial to change that course, because not only do we see these projections where there is a huge gap between what we want to do and what has been prom…

8

Nov

2023

EN Speech

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Type-approval of motor vehicles and engines with respect to their emissions and battery durability (Euro 7) (debate)

Mr President, sometimes you have the feeling that the Euro 7 debate was more about the car industry than it is about air quality, although this proposal is there to improve air quality – mainly in our cities, where road transport is still one of the biggest polluters in Europe, and where 70 000 people die prematurely because of bad air quality, because of road transport. That’s what we’re trying t…

17

Oct

2023

EN Speech

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Commission Work Programme 2024 (debate)

Madam President. First of all, congratulations to the Executive Vice—President on the extension of his portfolio to include the Green Deal. So let’s start with the Green Deal. First of all, we are very happy to read about some of the proposals that will be forthcoming on micro-plastics, on the forest monitoring law and on animal transport. However, the S&D also raised the question of what will hap…

12

Sep

2023

EN Speech

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Ambient air quality and cleaner air for Europe (debate)

Mr President, the Green Deal has always, from the start, been about more than only climate neutrality. We’ve always said this our economy needs to be a fully circular but also a zero-pollution economy. And that’s exactly what is here on the table. We want to achieve a zero-pollution economy while we are also moving to climate neutrality. And of course some people will say, ah, does it need to come…

12

Sep

2023

EN Speech

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Towards a more disaster-resilient EU - protecting people from extreme heatwaves, floods and forest fires (debate)

Mr President, first of all, what we are seeing again this summer, and what we are seeing nowadays every summer and winter, is the new climate reality. This is exactly what science has been warning about and we will see it more, because the warming of our planet will lead to more extremes and we are not prepared to deal with those extremes. And that’s what we have seen again this summer. First of a…

12

Jul

2023

EN Speech

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Delivering on the Green Deal: risk of compromising the EU path to the green transition and its international commitments (debate)

Mr President, I think this is a good debate, and let’s maybe try to calm down and lower our voices, right? So maybe not only on the Nature Restoration Law – I think every one of us in this room and certainly in the Council have subscribed to the Green Deal, and we have all agreed we want our economy in 2050 to be climate—neutral, to be fully circular and to be clean. That has all been part of the …

11

Jul

2023

EN Speech

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Nature restoration (debate)

Mr President, ‘making nature healthy again is key [...] and an ally in the fight against climate change and disease outbreaks. It is at the heart of our [...] European Green Deal’. I’m quoting Ursula von der Leyen. The EU Nature Restoration Law is a generation’s opportunity to take concrete and effective action. More than 100 companies made that statement last week, making clear how important this…

10

Jul

2023

EN Speech

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Industrial Emissions Directive - Industrial Emissions Portal - Deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure - Sustainable maritime fuels (FuelEU Maritime Initiative) - Energy efficiency (recast) (joint debate - Fit for 55 and Industrial Emissions)

Madam President, I am not sure my colleague was really speaking as ENVI rapporteur. I didn’t get that feeling. I will speak here as ENVI rapporteur on the energy efficiency file. First, I really would like to thank the rapporteur and all the shadows for the great work on energy efficiency. I think it is very important. We are always talking about energy efficiency first, but still energy efficienc…