EuropaWorld 9/11/2001 No Weakening at Marrakesh, Declares Wallström

European Environment Commissioner, Margot Wallström opened the high level segment of the Marrakech Climate Change talks with a typically robust and unapologetic defence of the actions that the European Union has taken recently to ensure the Kyoto Protocol is ratified in time for the Johannesburg Sustainable Development Summit next September.

There have been some indications that a few countries have been looking to back track on the political agreement reached in July in Bonn, particularly over the matter of penalties for failing to reach the progressive Kyoto targets. Margot Wallström was having none of this.

"Let me be clear;" she declared. "Ministers are not coming here to weaken in any way what we have already agreed. The world would quite simply not understand if we would not be able to finish the job properly so that implementation can begin. Marrakech must be the place where the road from Buenos Aires ends. I am confident that all of us here share this objective."

The Commissioner said that the tragic events of 11th September emphasised the need for co-ordinated, multilateral, responses to problems that were impossible to solve individually. Climate change was a problem that should be of concern to all, and one that was most effectively addressed by a multilateral response.

"We are here in Marrakech to finish a job," she continued. "While the Bonn Agreement saved the Kyoto Protocol, we now have to resolve the outstanding technical issues that translate the political agreement reached in July into the implementing rules for the Protocol."