“We need to protect the climate in an intelligent way,” was the call today by Dr. Joachim Wuermeling, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, at the European Business Summit in Brussels. “Climate protection today is one of the central challenges as we shape globalisation.”
State Secretary Dr. Wuermeling continued: “We want to tackle the challenges in the fields of energy and climate protection without losing sight of growth and jobs.” This is a challenge, he said, not just for government, but also for business: companies need to become even more innovative in order to adapt to new realities, for example as new markets for environmentally friendly technologies are established and expanded. “Climate protection must not become bogged down in symbolism and ideology. It must be undertaken intelligently,” stressed Dr. Wuermeling: the recently adopted agenda on climate protection can only be a success if it is implemented in the form of specific commercial activity.
State Secretary Wuermeling said: “Intelligent climate protection is a significant part of sustainable policy-making. The more sustainably our European companies are managed, the more successful this will be in Europe. We do not wish to draw level with other regions of the world like the USA by copying their recipes for success, but on the basis of our own, European, values. These clearly include sustainability.”
These European values are to be underlined in the shape of the Berlin Declaration at the Informal European Summit on 25 March. This Declaration, said Wuermeling, must become an important step along the road to a constitution for Europe. “Because Europe’s future is our common task.”
