Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-06-13-Speech-3-161"
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"en.20010613.4.3-161"2
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Mr President, I would first of all like to thank the rapporteur, Mr Hughes, and all the members of Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, as well as the members of the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism, for the work they have done.
I will say the same for Amendments Nos 3, 5, 8, 12, 15, 17 and 19, which cannot be accepted because they either risk coming into conflict with the existing rules in Regulations No 3820/85 or No 3821/85, or Directive 88/599, or there may be a risk of encountering difficulties in their implementation.
I would like to remind you that the concepts of working time and driving time are two different notions, regulated by two different legal instruments. In this respect, there is one amendment in particular, Amendment No 23, which involves a disproportionate administrative burden and which I cannot accept. As Mr Hughes said at the beginning of his speech, as well as various other speakers, the essential thing is the inclusion of self-employed workers, which, according to the proposal I produced at the time, would take place automatically. I believe that, from the point of view of the internal logic of the Regulation, it is based on the fact that tiredness is a safety risk, and therefore, as the person in charge of the Directorate-General for Energy and Transport I presented a proposal of this nature, because otherwise it would be simply an issue for the Commissioner responsible for Social Affairs and not for me. I am doing so for safety reasons; although I fully share this concern, I have a commitment to the Council which I must respect, but you know that you can rely on me to try to seek solutions during the conciliation debates, the final result of which I hope will be as positive as we all wish.
As you know, this directive has a special significance for me. In fact, at the end of 1998 the Commission presented its first proposal aimed at introducing common rules applicable to all professional drivers and, since then, this Directive has followed a complicated and tortuous path and has been in deadlock within the Council throughout that time.
In 2000, a modification of the general directive on the organisation of certain aspects of working time was adopted, Directive 93/104/EC, in order to incorporate mobile and non-mobile workers in the transport sector. However, it should be pointed out that despite this modification mobile workers are only covered in a series of areas, in particular the average weekly 48 working hours, annual holidays, health controls of nocturnal workers and the guarantee of sufficient rest time. For this reason, to maintain and defend the proposed directive under discussion still makes total sense.
Having realised how difficult it was for work to progress in the Council and out of concern to take a step forward, although it was not the ideal step, at the end of 2000 I presented an amended proposal for a directive which, as you know, provided for the automatic inclusion in the long term, specifically after 3 years, of self-employed drivers.
I fully agree with what has been said here, since the Directorate-General for Energy and Transport is concerned with regulating the activity time of drivers outside driving time, for safety reasons. A driver’s degree of tiredness does not depend on whether he is self-employed or on a salary. Please have no doubt that that is my position. Therefore, knowing the difficulties, I proposed a text to the Council and Parliament in which that aspect was modified, with a three-year transition period for the incorporation of self-employed drivers, but with that incorporation taking place automatically.
There is no need to remind you of the long discussions in Council, which ended with a common position on a compromise accepted by all the States, all the delegations present, and which, of course, I myself accept on behalf of the Commission. In this respect, I would like to say that I believe that, while not perfect, it is a step forward. It should be pointed out that, in the arguments of the delegation of the different countries of the European Union, of the ministers, there is one factor which is true and that it is the considerable difficulty of genuinely controlling self-employed drivers. And, although self-employed drivers are excluded, it is a step forward.
It is a compromise which I have accepted, although I do not like it, and I would like to make this very clear. Ladies and gentlemen, you must understand that I am always faithful to my commitments and I will therefore honour this one. I will not be able to support a series of amendments that you are proposing, although I would like to because I fully agree with them, but I have a commitment to the Council. This does not mean that, when the conciliation takes place, as I believe it will
because I doubt that the Council will reach a compromise leading to the automatic inclusion of self-employed workers, as I think it should – I will not use all my resources to try to find a solution to unblock the situation which is no doubt going to come about now.
I will refer to a series of amendments, which will be listed specifically tomorrow, which I cannot accept at the moment, although I agree with their content. I can accept Amendments Nos 7, 11, 14 and 16, which include ideas which appeared in the modified proposed Directive and do not exactly form part of the compromise agreed in the Council and which I believe improve the overall content of the Directive.
Furthermore, we have been able to see that Amendments Nos 9 and 12 provide the texts with greater clarity and that Nos 18 and 22 offer, in principle, better protection, although we will perhaps have to consider modifying the specific wording, but in terms of their content, we will not be able to accept them."@en1
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