Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-01-14-Speech-2-051"
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"en.20030114.2.2-051"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I should first like to welcome the overall objective sought by the Commission's proposal, namely of making our roads even safer. I am therefore grateful to all of the Members who have worked on it in the committees to bring us closer to this objective. Allow me, as a member of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development and as someone from a rural constituency, nevertheless to make a number of critical comments.
At first sight, the title ‘harmonisation of certain social legislation relating to road transport’ does not appear to have any relevance for agriculture policy. However, the Commission proposal contains a number of points which are also important for agriculture. Alongside vehicles that the layperson would imagine to be passenger, goods or towing vehicles in the conventional sense, namely cars or lorries, the Commission proposal also affects vehicles that are used in farming. Hitherto these were excluded by virtue of the old Article 13. If courier and express delivery services are frequently involved in serious accidents then it may well be justified to include them in the scope of this regulation. But for milk collection vehicles and tractors to be made subject to provisions of this kind as well does seem to me to be very arbitrary. Imagine what this means in real life: tractors – and some are really very small – with tachographs, or the driver of a milk lorry, who goes from farm to farm and can no longer have his little chat (rest period) with farmer X because he has to respect a very particular sequence of driving times and rest periods, as if he were travelling from Rotterdam to Munich. Let me give you another example: Article 13 provides for an exemption for the transport of live animals within a 50-kilometre radius. For vehicles transporting animal carcasses and offal there is no such exemption. What is the reasoning behind this? I view the restrictions that are to be introduced on breakdown vehicles in a similarly critical light.
The current regulation, which provided for exemptions in the areas that I have mentioned, certainly did not penalise the weaker members of society, but it was practicable. Thankfully my group has tabled amendments that mitigate some of these shortcomings in the Commission proposal. Nevertheless, I am certainly of the opinion that there will still be much more to correct before the second reading, precisely in the agricultural sector, if we want legislation that the public will understand and also accept. Anything else just causes bad feeling towards Europe."@en1
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