BERLIN - European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas on Saturday urged Germany, the current holder of the rotating European Union presidency, to do more to protect the environment.
"The EU's aims on climate protection cannot be realised unless Germany, the biggest economy in Europe, is on board," he told the German daily Die Welt.
He was speaking the day after a report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned of the dire consequences of global warming.
"The German car industry could also do more -- the future will depend on cars that conserve energy and respect the environment, and not on large vehicles that waste energy," Dimas said.
Germany has a strong car industry and its motorways are among the few in the world that have no general speed limit.
Meanwhile, former head of the United Nations Environment Programme and ex-German environment minister Klaus Topfer warned in a separate interview that "Germans continue to considerably affect the climate."
Each German produces on average 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide, compared with less than seven tonnes per person in France, he told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
"Most of the reduction of greenhouse gases in Germany is due to cleaning up the energy sector in the former East Germany and is a consequence of German reunification," he added.
"Germany must reduce its emissions to between 60 and 80 percent," Topfer said, for which there is an "urgent need for a revolutionary change in energy consumption, whether in the economic sector or in society".
04/07/2007 16:59 GMT