H.E. Mr. Patrick Engelberg:

I thank Deputy O’Reilly for his questions on climate change and other issues. His first comment was about getting international support. At this moment, it looks quite encouraging as big global players are already making offers to reduce their own carbon emissions. In its EU Presidency Luxembourg will play a role but it will be one of internal EU co-ordination, with the Commission. The French are very active because they are chairing the conference in Paris and want it to be a success and seem to be successful.

Solar and wind energy are encouraged in Luxembourg. Our government is a coalition with the Green Party and we have a Green Minister for the Environment, which reflects the general awareness of the Luxembourg public of environmental issues. These policies are encouraged. We have a lot of wind energy, not quite as much solar energy because we seem to have a similar climate to Ireland’s, but we do want to push this during our Presidency. Nuclear energy is a bit more complicated because Luxembourg is not in favour of nuclear energy and for the concrete reason that one of the biggest nuclear energy plants in the EU is across our border.

The Cattenom nuclear power plant in Franceis the subject of major political debate in Luxembourg, to the point that our Government decided years ago that we would not want to use electricity generated from nuclear power.

The issue of unemployment was mentioned. We all admire Ireland's record on fighting unemployment since the crisis. This is also the first priority of our programme. Unemployment and access to work is what European citizens care about. This is why we think it is the first major issue we should tackle to make the European Union relevant. If we are not able to set a framework where employment is created in the EU, our citizens will wonder what value the EU is giving them.

I mentioned the digital economy, which we view as a transversal element of the economy. To make it possible, people must have digital skills. We need to educate our youth and also enable people to enter the digital economy in the first instance to find work and then avail of the social dimension to it. More and more people are excluded from economic changes and access to services and goods because they do not have the necessary skills to be able to enter the digital dimension of society. We therefore also need to do something about this and to invest in skills and human capital.

Deputy Halligan raised the question of Greece. I indicated earlier that the Luxembourg Government would be able to accept more in its national approach than it would table as a Presidency. We could eventually live with a certain write-off of the Greek debt despite the fact that we have extended more than €400 million in this context. As one can imagine, it is not our preference. We would rather contemplate a restructuring of the debt and giving the Greek people more time to pay their debts and reorganise their economy in order that they can put themselves into a condition where they can envisage reimbursing those who lent them money rather than deciding the countries would write off part of the debt. As I said earlier, it is very important to us that when we come up with a solution for Greece, it should respect what has been done by other countries which had been in similar situations and were able to tackle their national economic problems.

On the question of migration and refugees, we believe we need to take a long-term approach to solve this problem. The Deputy is absolutely right that many people are leaving their countries of origin because they are fleeing war, civil war, dictatorships and terrorism. As long as the root problems which give rise to immigration are not tackled, we will face more and more refugees trying to come to Europe. It is easier to cross the Mediterranean now than during the winter months and we will face more waves of refugees. We try to find solutions to relieve countries such as Italy and Greece who are at the forefront. It is not easy. We, unfortunately, had to acknowledge ten days ago that there were difficulties at European Council level in coming up with solutions. We, as the country hosting the Presidency, have been asked to look into a scheme to deal with the first emergency problem which is to deal with the 40,000 plus 20,000 refugees, but we are fully aware this is not the solution to the problem. The processing centre will help us to select those who can be classified as refugees and allowed into the EU in order that we can try to find a solution for them. Given the situation in the countries we are talking about, the numbers will still be very important.