It’s Time… for a European Energy & Environmental Agency

These positions aim to hinder the implementation of a decision unanimously taken in March 2007 by the European Council. Moreover, these governments threaten to use their veto right even if the matter is clearly submitted to a co-decision procedure.

National egoisms and nearsighted reasoning prevent to address the concerns of the European public opinion and the international scientific community on global warming, which are supported by reliable in-depth studies, and to defend the deep interests of the European citizens, of humankind, and of future generations, affirmed Samuele Pii, President of JEF-Europe.

Moreover, the costs found in the records do not consider the enormous damages that could be avoided by containing the trend of climate change nor the significant positive effects of technological innovations linked to the European ecologic reconversion on the manufacturing sector – including on employment, continued Pii.

JEF-Europe reaffirms its deep conviction that no country is able to efficiently address the global environment problems with unilateral measures and that the European Union is the only economic area in the world where it is possible to start the necessary ecological reconversion process of the world economy.

Hence, JEF-Europe considers that, instead of taking steps back, the European Union should move forward by:

– Creating a European Energy and Environmental Agency with autonomous powers and own means based on the model of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) that had the mission to rationalise the energy resources of that time and to regulate the production and consumption in two key sectors during the post-war reconstruction period.

– Assuming a leadership role in the ecologic reconversion of the world economy by speaking with a single voice and bringing its position to the United States, China, India and other newly industrialising nations.