Bas Eickhout, on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group. – Madam President, I would like first of all to thank the rapporteur for the collaboration on this report, and I especially want to thank President Hoyer for being here and for reacting to our report.

I would like to focus on one crucial thing, and that is how we, as Europe, are going to reach the Paris Agreement. It is true that the European Investment Bank (EIB) in 2015 published a communication on climate change action, but after Paris we now know that decarbonisation is the aim. If we then look at the lending of the EIB, there is still a lot of fossil fuel lending – in 2013, at the level of EUR 2 billion; at 2015, at the level of EUR 2.5 billion – going up. In 2016 it was lower, but we know that two big gas pipeline projects are pending to the value of EUR 3 billion. That is big expenditure, and the issue is that investments in those infrastructures are there for decades. If we want to achieve zero emissions by half—time this century, then any investment in fossil fuel infrastructure should be considered very, very, very carefully. Especially as regards gas, which has always been promoted as a transitionary energy source, we know that if we take energy efficiency seriously, European gas demand will hardly increase. Why, then, do we continue to increase infrastructure? We know that every pipeline that you build is a lock—in. It is not a transition; it is a lock-in, and this is something the EIB should really pay attention to. It is why, in the report, we are asking the EIB to come up with a serious plan for phase-out fossil fuel lending, and I would very much like to hear the President responding to that. Hopefully we can work on such a plan, because what the EIB is doing in the end is instrumental for our future infrastructure, which should be fossil—free.