Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-04-Speech-3-266"
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"en.20010404.10.3-266"2
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"Mr President, Madam Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, first I should like to thank the rapporteur. He has seen this difficult dossier, which involved an extremely difficult fight in the Council, through two institutions and the Conciliation Committee, and that is most important. Rapporteurs simply need to have the courage to stand their ground. He has demonstrated that courage and has been successful as a result. I join him in thanking the French Presidency of the Council, which endeavoured to find a compromise at the eleventh hour. I should like to thank the Vice-President and her officials for helping us to negotiate that compromise. So, in this respect, my warmest thanks to the Commission.
I, too, shall endeavour to be brief on this lovely evening, hence just three points. First: we had to set ports, inland ports, sea ports and intermodal terminals in the right context within a text on trans-European networks, which is why we said they must be ports and inland ports which are connected to the hinterland, which form part of a network, and not individual ports, which may be very nice but which have no trans-European significance. I think that the classification which we have found together with the Council is a very good one.
Secondly, we had to draw a dividing line between infrastructure and superstructure. To non-specialists that all sounds very complicated, but it is fundamental to the question of equality of competition between ports or to the question of inadmissible distortions of competition. First, it was important to clarify what we mean by infrastructure. So what must the state do and pay, without intervention on the part of the Community, without any notification requirements? A typical question might be: does dredging a harbour mouth have to be notified or not? This gave rise to a whole series of difficulties between the Member States and the Commission. But what was important was to clarify that superstructure is defined by reverting to infrastructure, in order to ensure that there is no competition-distorting aid. I think this was achieved very well.
And a third point, if I may. Madam Vice-President, please bear in mind that this is the first time that Parliament has been able to codecide on priority projects in the codecision procedure. Because the wise Heads of State or Government said after Essen and Dublin that they would decide what priority projects are! What is Parliament here for? In this case, we have managed, with the rapporteur’s help, to ensure that the Council and Parliament decide jointly on priority projects and we should bear this in mind when it comes to the revision."@en1
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