Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-11-Speech-2-171"
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"en.20030211.8.2-171"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would firstly like to thank Mr Izquierdo Collado for the work he has done over a long period. I believe his work has allowed us to hold the sometimes passionate debates which have resulted from the White Paper.
With regard to road safety, I am pleased to note that the honourable Members share the objective we have set of reducing the number of fatal road accidents by 50% by 2010. The Commission has just adopted a proposal for a directive on the safety of tunnels and we will shortly present a global action plan in the field of road safety. In this field, we will also present important proposals on the control of road transport in relation to the identification of motorway black spots.
I hope that these new measures will contribute to achieving this objective and they must be supplemented by measures established at national and local level, because here there is a very significant margin for subsidiarity.
In the field of maritime safety, ladies and gentlemen, we have held discussions for several years, following the tragic
accident, and again recently following the
disaster. However, ladies and gentlemen, the Commission can say that we have presented a coherent package of measures which enormously increase maritime safety in the European Union, which only need to be implemented, and that the remaining measures will be presented shortly. Some of them have already been presented, such as the timetable for the departure of single-hull oil tankers and their replacement by double-hull oil tankers, the requirement for safer and more modern oil tankers for the transport of the more polluting hydrocarbons and we will soon present issues such as criminal responsibility in the event of serious negligence. We must insist on the maximum level of compensation funds in the event of pollution or in the proposals to promote with the countries of the Union modifications in the field of international maritime law, which is based on completely obsolete principles from the nineteenth century rather than the twenty-first century.
With regard to air transport, in 2003 we will concentrate our action on external relations, including the mandates for renegotiation of open skies agreements, which is an extremely urgent matter, beginning with the agreements with the United States.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have seen the proposals made by the rapporteur, in general terms, though I will discuss the different points in more detail later. I believe we are working in the same spirit. I hope that the approval of this Parliament, with the amendments it considers appropriate in a report on the White Paper, will help to speed up the measures being discussed, both in Parliament and in the Council, and that those yet to come will clarify the possibilities, the margins and the limits and will above all allow the discussion with this Parliament within this same mandate to be speeded up.
We are talking about promoting a transport policy, taking account of new elements, as has been said, in a clear and precise way, such as the aspect of combining sustainable development and growth, in other words, the incorporation of quality of life and the protection of the environment as factors which are also essential when it comes to drawing up our policies.
In this regard, the almost sixty measures proposed between now and 2010 are geared towards rebalancing modes of transport, which does not mean running down road transport – let us make this very clear – or sea transport, which are the two most competitive modes of transport, but simply preventing the future deterioration of rail transport or inland waterways transport in the north of Europe, which are absolutely essential forms of transport which must play a fundamental role in absorbing the new transport demands, and this is also true of the development of sea transport.
It is therefore a question of rebalancing modes of transport, removing bottlenecks, having a policy of safe transport – safety is an essential point when it comes to serving the users – and also tackling the globalisation which is today being experienced by many modes of transport, in particular air and sea transport.
The analysis we have presented in the White Paper has been debated in depth, also by the industry and the sectors mostly affected. Also by the Council. In this regard, most of the measures proposed in the White Paper have been presented by the Commission to this Parliament and to the Council. Some have made significant progress, such as Galileo, accession to Eurocontrol, the creation of air and sea safety agencies – I will talk later about road safety, which Mr Sr. Izquierdo Collado has mentioned – including initiatives on working time in the road transport sector or the recent agreement in the Council on the single European sky and the Marco Polo programme.
With regard to the second rail package, the negotiations are at a very advanced stage and this Parliament expressed its opinion very clearly just a couple of months ago. However, other important proposals are still at a preparatory stage, such as the trans-European networks. As you know, despite the fact that this Parliament had expressed its support for the partial reform proposed by the Commission, the Council preferred to delay it and simply to go ahead with a more general revision. Alright. In this regard, I hope that the Van Miert Group, which is considering a global revision of the trans-European networks in view of enlargement, that is, a Europe of twenty-seven – because it includes the countries with which negotiations are either completed or at an advanced stage – will achieve a good result before the end of the Greek Presidency and that the document can therefore be presented during the Italian Presidency. It should therefore also be discussed by this Parliament.
I would like to say that we are also at the final stage of the launch of the infrastructures package, which will contain three essential elements for the development of infrastructures: a methodology for charging – which Mr Izquierdo Collado mentioned a moment ago and which we discussed before the debate on the issue of ecopoints in Austria – as a preliminary stage before a directive on charging which will indicate how far the Council and this Parliament are willing to go on this issue and which lays down the forms, modes and limits.
Secondly, a system for incentivising public-private partnerships in the creation of infrastructures. We need to incorporate private capital into the development of new infrastructures in order to speed up the implementation of these new infrastructures in a Europe of twenty-five – and soon of twenty-seven.
Thirdly, a European system of electronic pricing which furthermore will be accompanied by compatibility, in other words interoperability of practical, technical systems in the different countries of the European Union, with the medium-term aim of creating uniformity, establishing a single system based on the satellite control systems, that is, the Galileo system."@en1
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