Reference is made to the front-page article entitled “PN MEPs found poor on green issues, PL not much better” (TMIS, 5 April).

As the article itself admits, our environmental credentials were tested on the basis of a website set up by the European Greens in order to give the Greens political mileage ahead of the June MEP elections.

This is a very partisan viewpoint and I am surprised that The Malta Independent on Sunday used a political website to judge our track record on the environment.

Moreover, this website does not provide an objective insight into how MEPs performed because it adopts a selective approach, taking only some parliamentary reports and only some votes in those reports. It isolates them from the whole picture, while the votes on the rest of the report are hidden.

This gives a very distorted view of the voting record of MEPs who are not members of the Green Group. Through this manipulated exercise, only a Green MEP can pass the test of the Green Party. But is that a surprise?

Allow me therefore to react to the specific points raised in your report.

Greenhouse gas emissions targets

Take the vote on greenhouse gas emissions targets for 2050. PN MEPs voted for more realistic and achievable targets than the Greens because we believe that before setting high targets for 2050 we should first see how we are going to realistically perform in reaching the 2020 targets.

In so far as making the 2020 targets binding, we considered that, at this stage, we should not undermine the flexibility that is necessary for countries, such as Malta, to adapt in order to reach the objectives, considering that we are still in the process of adopting the options for our country when it comes to environmentally friendly technologies.

Global warming

In terms of avoiding dangerous levels of global warming, the analysis concludes that PN MEPs “thought EU climate policies should not reflect the reality necessary to prevent dangerous global warming”.

What it does not say is that, in this case, the Greens had tabled an amendment calling for the EU negotiating position in the international climate negotiations to be consistent with limiting warming to 2°C, and for the role of offsetting to be marginal to EU emissions reduction efforts. It also does not say that the majority of Parliament rejected this amendment.

Instead, the majority of Parliament, including PN MEPs, voted on an original paragraph in the report which notes that all efforts to curb emissions should aim at staying well below the objective of limiting global temperature increases to below 2°C and which calls on the Commission to closely monitor and analyse the latest scientific findings with a view to assessing, in particular, whether the EU 2°C target would still achieve the aim of avoiding dangerous climate change. This was not mentioned in the exercise.

CO² emissions from cars

The exercise also states that when it came to reducing CO² emissions from cars, PN MEPs “wanted weaker car CO² emissions limits and wanted to delay these limits in line with the demands of the manufacturers”.

What the exercise conveniently ignores is that we voted in favour of the entire report, which delivered substantial improvements on emission standards from cars. However, our group did not want to slap limits, suggested by the Greens, which would spell the death blow to the already shaky car industries in Europe.

Let us not forget that unrealistically high targets on car manufacturers would translate into loss of jobs in Maltese factories that produce car parts. We have already seen the problems faced by companies such as Trelleborg where the Maltese government had to step in to prevent job losses. We do not need to make them worse.

For the Greens, even at such a critical moment for our economy, jobs do not appear to be an important consideration.

Aviation and emissions

Aviation and emissions were also mentioned in the exercise. On this issue, I had been directly approached by AirMalta prior to the vote. Our national airline had strongly insisted that, unless it was changed, this legislative proposal would spell disaster for our national airline because it set targets that AirMalta considered as unrealistically high.

I took the view that Air Malta and other airlines should still make an effort to raise their environmental standards. However, this should be done in a sustainable and gradual manner without harming the airline. We succeeded in this approach and the law was adopted on this basis.

Had the European Parliament followed the Greens in the European Parliament, AirMalta’s worst fears would have materialised and it would have been driven out of business because of standards it cannot achieve.

And, of course, if Malta had an AD MEP, he or she would have voted with the Greens instead of with AirMalta.

The pattern is there

There is a pattern in all this, namely that for the Greens environmental objectives should ideally be achieved tomorrow instead of the day after tomorrow, even if this comes at the cost of jobs at AirMalta and of local factories that produce spare parts for cars.

On the other hand, we are concerned with environmental objectives but also with jobs. This is why we voted in a manner that strikes a fair balance between the two.

Simon Busuttil MEP

Head of Maltese delegation

EPP-ED group in the European Parliament