Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-10-Speech-1-098"
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"en.20030310.5.1-098"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I think it right that, in what you had to say, you quite unequivocally faced the issue head-on, but you should be aware that the committee's amendments, about which you made critical comments, are the result of large majorities in the committee, for which I want to express my gratitude to Mr Jarzembowski. We passed them with a great deal of unanimity, and I think we will get an absolute majority of 314 votes on the decisive points when we vote tomorrow.
Discussing the part package today and voting on it tomorrow, we know that many European port cities – and I emphasise cities – have seen their workers, out of fear for their jobs, out of fear of social dumping, taking to the streets and demonstrating, and I say, for myself and on behalf of my group, that we sympathise with port workers as they draw attention to their concerns and needs. They have every right to do so, but not, as I see it, to throw stones and get into scuffles with the police. I take the demonstrations in the port cities to be in support of the work we are doing, as the Common Position does indeed include a number of odious points that we cannot accept; it is those things in the Common Position that we want to change today and tomorrow.
The most odious point is the formulation on self-handling, which is also to include what is done on land. Let me say quite clearly that this is, in our view, unacceptable. We take the view that self-handling can mean only those things that can be done by a ship and its company on their own. Anything more than that is not on, as is clear from the term ‘self-handling’ itself; anything else would be handling by others.
Let me say, for the benefit of the Commission and the Council, that we Social Democrats do not believe this definition of self-handling to be capable of being negotiated in a conciliation procedure. There is no moving beyond that, either here or in the conciliation procedure. I want to point out that the directive contains an array of provisions that touch – to the workers' benefit – on social protection, social security matters, and their qualifications for the jobs they do. I think the committee has done very good work on these things, and the Social Democrats have tabled amendments to make overall improvements. You can vote in favour of all these amendments tomorrow, and then everything will be that little bit better for the workers.
Finally, I turn to the issue of pilot services, an area in which the Commission was very keen – and the Council rather less keen – to see competition introduced. We believe this to be wrong. As carriers, ships are subject to so many constraints, and face so much competition, that safety often gets left behind. As we have seen from what happened to the
and the
pilots have to answer for the safety of ships. They therefore have nothing to do with this directive.
In general – as Mr Jarzembowski has mentioned – we have now devoted a great deal of attention to competition in ports. My main problem continues to be with competition between one port and another, and that is where the Commission has not done enough. We hope the Commission will now present us with something good in this area, so that we can really get to grips with the problem of inter-port competition."@en1
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