EuroACE congratulates MEPs on historic vote

EuroACE welcomes today's overwhelming endorsement by the European Parliament, in its first reading, of all the key proposals in the Energy End Use and Energy Services Directive. In particular, we applaud the skill with which the rapporteur Mechtild Rothe has worked so well with the Opinion formers of all the other political groups, so as to ensure this directive received so much support from every main political group. We congratulate the Parliament not just for endorsing mandatory energy savings targets, but for adopting more ambitious targets than the Commission proposed. We trust that, particularly given that energy efficiency is Commissioner Andris Piebalgs number one policy priority, he will endorse the Parliament's amendments. We would expect nothing less from him.

We also urge all the energy ministers, when they meet on June 28, to abandon any thoughts of preferring just voluntary targets. We saw from the failure of the 1993 SAVE directive how toothless such commitments can be.

On behalf of the almost half million people currently employed by EuroACE member companies in the energy efficiency industry, - and most importantly on the many others for which full implementation of this directive would provide work - we call upon the Ministers to agree to Europe adopting just such a binding target, to reduce our energy waste. This would be good for energy security, for competitiveness, and for our planet.