Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-30-Speech-4-024"
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"en.20001130.1.4-024"2
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"Mr President, first of all I would like to thank the rapporteurs for their sterling work. It is absolutely imperative to ensure, taking the environment, safety, fishing communities, and tourism into account, that we do not have a repeat performance of what happened before. All eyes were on the
in the first instance, but a tanker was sinking in other waters off Turkey at the same time. The
was double-hull but contained chemicals in a particular form. Mr Gayssot, Greek ships have sunk without warning, when there were no storms in the vicinity. In short, as I understand, there are reasons besides storms in the Channel that should prompt us to consider stopping shipping traffic there.
At the end of the day, we are talking about eight to ten thousand sub-standard ships. In other words, this is a very extensive problem. The age of ships is a factor, but not the most important one. Maintenance plays a very important part. That is what we are discussing now, along with manpower. The human aspect of the whole issue is extremely important.
I would just like to concentrate on two dossiers: port state control and the phasing out of single-hull oil tankers. Everyone has stated – and I absolutely agree – that the current 25% inspection rate necessary for port state control has not been achieved yet. Some countries should take a very close look at what they need to do about this back home. These countries must make the necessary resources available, people must be trained and so on. In particular, the President of the current Transport Council has a great deal of work to do in his own country in the near future, even though he will not be the President any more.
In a nutshell, we should not just look at the technical side of the matter, we also need to look at crewing issues, and not just make laws, because as far as I am concerned, it would be no bad thing to raise that 25% inspection rate even higher in time, but first we need to take the other steps. Once again, enforcement is the most important measure.
I have a few brief comments to make regarding single-hull ships. I am not happy with the fact that ships weighing 600 to 3000 tonnes have been left out. Nor am I pleased that the financial incentives have been completely removed from the dossier. I do not think the proposal was well drafted, but feel that we are certainly going to have to build financial incentives or sweeteners into these measures in the near future.
Thirdly, when we discuss dossiers of this kind, I think it becomes clear that we do not make the connection between our oil supply, on the one hand, and the fact that we are still using fossil fuels on the other. Suppose we have new ships built, phasing single-hull ships out and building new double-hull ones, then we will have a more extensive fleet, when what we should in fact be doing is introducing other forms of fuel supply."@en1
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