Can it be a private project if it creates not only an energy supply problem – that is, a gas supply problem – for nearby countries, but also an ecological problem in the Baltic Sea?

The Council is fully aware of the environmental problems caused by the plans for expanding the port of Primorsk, by the construction of a pipeline to that port and by the fact that tankers will be navigating the Gulf of Finland.

Whilst aware of the issue, the Commission considers that this is not the place to address it.

By closing the Mont Blanc tunnel or keeping it closed, one is in fact just shifting an ecological problem from one part of the Alps to another; we would just be shifting the problem from the Mont Blanc region to the Fréjus region, to Switzerland, and to the Brenner and Tarvisio routes, as I said before, which does not seem right to me.

The Commission is aware of the largely untackled problem of multiple discrimination and has launched a study on the subject as part of its work programme for 2006, which will look at what is being done in the Member States in this area and make recommendations.

– (SV) In spite of the fact that some of the Commissioners-designate have shown that they are well qualified and ecologically aware and would certainly make good Commissioners, for example Margot Wallström and Michaela Schreyer, we cannot support the Prodi Commission, to some degree because of the total lack of ecological and social awareness in Romano Prodi’s manifesto and in other respects because of the presence of Commissioners-designate who have not been completely convincing as to their suitability and readiness to act with complete honesty before Parliament.