1. Welcomes the Action Plan for the automotive industry and notes the strategic importance of the automotive industry to the European economy, which represents around 12 million direct and indirect jobs, delivers a sizeable positive contribution to the EU trade balance of some EUR 90 billion (in 2011), attracts the highest private spending on research and innovation (circa EUR 30 billion in 2010), and acts as an essential driver for technological innovation; stresses that an ambitious European industrial policy, with a strong emphasis on local employment and the development of green technologies, is a necessary lever for a job-intensive ...[+++] recovery and for boosting sustainable growth; stresses that the European car industry needs a renewal strategy directed towards more sustainable cars, as part of a greener transport system;

(a)boosting Europe's industrial leadership through research, technological development, demonstration and innovation in the following enabling and industrial technologies ("Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies"):

This regulation will force car manufacturers to develop new green technologies and, although this seemingly imposes a new burden on them, it may boost the car industry’s competitiveness on the global market.

We can expect the European car manufacturers to join forces to an even greater extent when it comes to developing these new technologies, for example, to create affordable, high-performance batteries for electrical cars.

3. Recalls Parliament's resolution of 5 July 2005 on Stimulating Technologies for Sustainable development: An Environmental technologies action Plan for the European Union, emphasising that sufficient demand for bringing innovations to the market can only be created by clear and ambitious environmental policy targets, such as for example the legislation to reduce average CO2 emissions from passenger cars and light commercial vehicles to 120g CO2/km by 2012;

Believing that civil nuclear power was the key energy technology of the future, the founding fathers of the European Communities shared a functionalist belief that by obliging collaboration over the development of this technology between the Member States, via the Euratom Treaty, then political integration would more likely follow.