Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-22-Speech-1-081"
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"en.20030922.5.1-081"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would firstly like to thank all the honourable Members for their speeches, which have been very interesting.
Fourthly, cleaning ships. One of your speeches referred to ‘pump ships’. That is what we are proposing, and we would ask for your support with regard to the modification of the Agency’s capacities and the budgets for next year.
Fifthly, I referred myself to the social aspect and to the issue of a language for communication on each ship and, of course, the capacity for communication with external control systems. We have talked about this and we are working on it with a view to making a clear proposal in this regard in the future
or
package.
Sixthly, we cannot say that today the same could happen as happened three or four years ago, with the
nor even one year ago, with the
. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, because we have adopted extremely urgent measures which are already being applied in advance, and secondly, because part of the
and
packages are already in force and are obliging, for example, countries which have not been carrying out port controls, to do so. In fact, we are demanding compliance with the obligations before the Luxembourg Court.
The Baltic. Ladies and gentlemen, I have heard several speeches on this subject and I understand your concern. I am concerned about the Baltic and also about other closed seas, such as the Black Sea, which is already a European coast and which will be a European Union sea, and the Mediterranean, which already is one. They are also closed seas where there is significant oil tanker traffic and where any disaster involving pollution would have far more negative consequences than they would in the Baltic, as a result of the problem of regeneration, cleaning and renewal of their waters. In this regard, we are working with our Russian neighbours, because they are fundamental in the Baltic and also because they are great exporters of oil, in order to improve safety and guarantees and in order to improve and implement a system of sea traffic control, which is absolutely essential, at least for ships carrying potentially dangerous goods. Not only for them, I believe, but at least, as a first step, for ships with potentially dangerous goods and for ferries, which transport people, and which also have problems.
With regard to the captain, there is one issue: judicial decisions, in the country I know best, are taken by judges and are independent. Neither the Spanish authorities nor the European authorities nor the regional authorities have much say in the matter. This is decided by the judge on duty, and I can assure you that they are enormously protective of their independence.
Almost a year ago we saw almost epic images of the seamen of the Galician
facing what appeared to be an inevitable disaster and fighting with all the means available to them, including their good luck, to halt an oil slick which appeared to be about to enter finally the very rich Galician
the
which are a source and breeding ground for European biodiversity and life. And they won the battle, through spectacular efforts. They worked day and night. All that mattered to those people was to win the battle against the sea. I know this because I spoke to several of them, and I know that many people here also did so.
As a tribute to those people who demonstrated the courage of sea-going people, and as a tribute to the thousands and thousands of volunteers who have worked there throughout all this time, and to the concern and solidarity shown throughout Europe in the face of the nature of the
tragedy, I would like to say that we must ensure that it can never happen again.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would ask you to accept that this is what we must talk about with a view to the future. For a long time things have been left, for a long time things have not been done and now it is we who are doing things. This Parliament, in accordance with your responsibilities; this Commission, in accordance with its responsibilities, and also the Council. And we must ensure success, and you still have a few months ahead of you.
Over the coming months we can speed up the issue of criminal responsibility for example, which I am still hoping we can bring forward; we can, for example, convince the Council not to demand unanimity when it comes to legally defining sea pollution, as we in the Commission have called for, and I hope the honourable Members will support us in this. There are a series of positive issues on which we can and must work.
You can always count on me with regard to the prevention of disasters such as those we have experienced, and I hope I will be able to continue to count on all of you.
Let us be frank. For a long time, the European Union’s best maritime safety policy was not to have one at all. I am going to refer solely to the last fifteen years, because it is since then that we have had the Single Act
and therefore majority voting – in the field of transport. And I am only going to refer to the most spectacular cases. 1987:
Europe, chemical products, 23 dead; 1989:
in the United States, 40 000 tonnes of spillage; 1991:
in Europe, 144 000 tonnes of oil; 1992: the
Europe, 74 000 tonnes of crude oil; 1993:
also in Europe, 85 000 tonnes of spillage; 1996:
70 000 tonnes of spillage, also in Europe; 1997: in Japan there has been the spillage from the
with 19 000 tonnes of crude oil; in 1999, the
spilled 20 000 tonnes of heavy oil in Europe and in 2002, the
also in Europe, 63 000 tonnes of heavy oil.
Ladies and gentlemen, we must bear very much in mind that in 1987 (
), in 1991 (
), in 1992 (
), in 1993 (
) and in 1996 (
), there were national, regional and European governments. There was a Commission, a Parliament and a Council of Ministers and nothing was done. That was the situation, ladies and gentlemen. We had to wait until 1999, with this Commission and this Parliament, for measures to be taken.
In 1981, immediately after the sinking of the
the United States implemented the OPA (Oil Pollution Act); if we in Europe, in 1987, 1991 or 1992, had done the same, we would surely have prevented the
the
and the
accidents, just to mention the most serious cases.
We must prevent this from happening again, ladies and gentlemen. There are two aspects: prevention, and dealing with disasters if they happen. The report by Mr Sterckx is very complete and I have congratulated him on it.
It is a question of seeing whether the cases we are now working on (the
and the
) allow us to prevent future accidents and, furthermore, present to the International Maritime Organisation certain ground rules which prevent this from happening in any part of the world. I am not at all happy with the idea of polluting the other seas of the world and therefore we must work to see how we can prevent that from happening.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to respond very briefly to certain questions. Double hulls, as the report by Mr Sterckx points out quite correctly, help and improve, but they are not the solution. We must seek a series of measures to increase safety. Furthermore, we are monitoring and analysing the ageing of these oil tankers, which have other problems which must be closely monitored, and we must also establish a maximum age and a form of monitoring and inspection from a certain age.
On the issue of the European coastguards, I fully agree with the European Parliament’s position, but also have to know where we are. We are taking the first steps, by means of the Agency, in order to better coordinate the actions and control and rescue capacities of the countries of the Union.
The third issue is recovering oil. The Commission is determined to deal with this issue and I must say that the government in question, the Spanish Government, has also stressed and reiterated its determination to carry out this recovery."@en1
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