Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-03-Speech-2-021"
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"en.20020903.2.2-021"2
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"Mr President, I would like to begin by congratulating Mrs Maes on a very competent and excellent report. Consideration of this subject is long overdue and I am grateful to the Commission for bringing it forward. The problem of third countries' aircraft and their safety standards has been of great concern to many people, particularly Eastern European airlines and maybe even further east than that.
The Commission's directive has sought to resolve this problem by introducing a large number of ramp inspections and inspectors to do spot-check inspections on these aircraft as they land in the European Union. That is one way to do it. There is another way we could have approached this, but I am not going to complain. I would just like to say that the way the Commission has proposed is a massive job creation programme for aeronautical engineers and technicians. I myself am an aeronautical engineer so I should not be complaining about this. But it is going to create a number of jobs at the Community airports where people will have to go and do spot-check inspections and ramp inspections.
An alternative that I might suggest for future consideration is to actually upgrade technical and maintenance facilities in third countries and give them support and aid so that they can upgrade their own technical specifications and maintenance facilities to a standard that is internationally acceptable. That is what the United States has been doing, particularly with African countries. This is good for exports and good for the United States aviation industry in that it provides a long-term opportunity to sell its goods and services. It is also a way of getting its equipment into place around the world – the Boeing-Airbus agreement, I suppose.
There are, of course, a number of issues relating to Community air transport which we need to look at. Might I be permitted to raise a very important issue for the British MEPs coming to Strasbourg? We get thrown off flights, even with fully confirmed tickets. Air France has done this repeatedly; yesterday two of my colleagues with confirmed tickets were thrown off because the flight had been overbooked. That is against international rules. It is also – and the Commissioner might wish to write to the president of Air France about this – a criminal offence for a Member of Parliament to be prevented from coming to Parliament in Britain. There is such a thing as a European arrest warrant, which we understand is now going to be put in place. I am raising these issues so that we may act before it is too late."@en1
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