Peter Liese on Future EU Climate and Environmental Policy
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We Need More Deal in the Green Deal / Unleashing Program for Climate Protection Instead of Detailed Regulations and Bureaucracy
"We need more deal in the Green Deal. Instead of detailed regulations and too much bureaucracy, we need to help the industry implement investments in climate neutrality through an unleashing package for climate protection," explained the environmental spokesperson of the largest group in the European Parliament (EPP, Christian Democrats), CDU Member of Parliament Dr. Peter Liese, ahead of the new European Parliament's constitution and the decision on the future President of the Commission.
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Ursula von der Leyen suggests exemptions from PFAS ban in letter to EPP MEPs in the European Parliament
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Peter Liese: Neither medicine nor the transformation to climate neutrality will work without PFAS
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is planning a permanent exemption from the planned ban on the PFAS chemicals for essential applications, e.g. in medicine or in the transformation to climate neutrality. This emerges from a letter that von der Leyen has addressed to a number of MEPs. Five member states had requested a comprehensive ban from the European Chemicals Agency ECHA, based in Helsinki. This led to opposition from the industry, as this group of substances is very, very diverse and in some areas the material is absolutely necessary. For example, the production of mRNA vaccines by BioNTech is only possible because the lipids required for this are produced with PFAS at Evonik's plant in Hanau, Germany. PFAS is equally indispensable in medical technology and in the production of hydrogen and wind turbines. Von der Leyen now writes that the Commission will provide for exemptions for these areas.
Commission Communication on the Health Union
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Major breakthroughs in the past five years / Further progress desperately needed after the election
“We achieved a major breakthrough in European Health Policy during the last mandate. This was not only due to COVID, already before the pandemic started, the Commission accepted the idea of the EPP-group and created the Cancer Action Plan. This is so successful that representatives of other diseases want a copy-paste. We as EPP support an action plan for cardiovascular diseases as well as for diseases like Parkinson and Alzheimer”, said Peter Liese, health policy spokesperson of the biggest parliamentary group (EPP Christian Democrats), after the publication of Commission communication through Vice President Margaritis Schinas.
The problem is not the ETS price, but the decline in industrial production
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Price drop partly politically desired / Prices of €100 or significantly higher to be expected in the medium term
“The problem is not the ETS price, but the decline in industrial production Europe,” said MEP Peter Liese, environmental policy spokesperson for the largest political group in the European Parliament (EPP, Christian Democrats) and rapporteur on the revision of emissions trading, in view of the current discussions on the price of certificates in the EU’s emissions trading system. In view of a slight drop in the ETS price compared to last year, Marion Labatut, Director of European Affairs at the French energy supplier EDF, for example, said that low CO2 prices were slowing down the decarbonization of the electricity sector. The Commission should therefore avoid bringing even more certificates onto the market.
Read more: The problem is not the ETS price, but the decline in industrial production