Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-18-Speech-2-146"
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"en.20031118.6.2-146"2
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"Mr President, seagoing shipping and ports offer more scope for abuse than many other businesses. They involve the handling of cross-border flows of goods between different states, not only within the European Union but also across the entire world. Those countries do not only differ in terms of legislation, but, above all, in terms of reward of labour, working conditions, safety and the extent of environmental protection. Such differences are eagerly seized on by those who see social dumping and environmental pollution as ways of winning a competitive battle.
For many years in seagoing shipping, we have known the phenomenon of flags of convenience, whereby ships of European owners are given a registration in a developing-world country. As a result, they pay lower taxes, need not comply with many rules and can hire crews at developing-world salaries. Enterprises in ownership of EU citizens compete with each other through the international jungle. The fact that to date, that jungle in the European ports has been kept outside of the door as much as possible is no coincidence. Without extensive battles fought by trade unions and without local port companies, ports of convenience would have taken root a long time ago. These are ports with an ever-lower level of pay, safety and environmental protection; ports that can offer only temporary jobs, which are dirty and unsafe and, above all, attract unskilled labourers; ports where much of the work can be done by people from the developing world who are not admitted to Europe for other on-shore work. In a competitive battle of this kind, ports that service a common hinterland will destroy each other. The winner will always be the most anti-social, the most environmentally-unfriendly, the most unsafe, and consequently, the port of greatest convenience.
If the European Union wishes to harmonise rules for port labour, these must be geared to eliminating unfair and dangerous competition per group of ports that serve a common hinterland. This problem is particularly acute for the ports surrounding the North Sea, from Dunkirk, in France, via the Belgian and Dutch ports to Hamburg, in Germany. Railways, rivers and canals connect those ports with largely the same industrial areas and with cities brimming with consumers. For a long time, those ports have been trying to steal each others’ customers by means of large government investments, low rates and a great deal of stealth. In the previous part-session, this Parliament stated that something should, in fact, be done about this by means of a port directive, one that would offer the highest level of protection for registered and qualified port labour across Europe, and which would prevent shipping accidents as a result of faults during loading, as happened with the Danish freight ship
in February. A port directive of that kind would be in keeping with a number of recent environmental measures of the European Union that are aimed at making it more difficult to dump shipping waste and freight residues at sea and, in time, at keeping away single-hulled tankers from European ports.
Instead, the Commission has proposed a directive that leads to the opposite. By hindering, or reducing, existing protection of registered port labour against unfair competition at Member State level, this competition is only set to increase. Maybe the port handling costs of goods will be reduced as a result, but these only formed a negligibly small part of the production costs in most cases anyway.
Parliament corrected these plans both at first reading two years ago and at second reading in March. Admittedly, this correction did not go as far as the trade unions wanted, and scope for abuse remained, but the parties involved with different interests appeared to be able to live with this to some degree. That is no longer the case since the Council of Transport Ministers refused systematically last summer to adopt those corrections. During conciliation, the parliamentary delegation initially appeared determined to persist in the view previously adopted by Parliament. This applied not only to the groups of the Left, but I also heard this from Christian Democrats and Liberals.
On 29 September, most of those objections had suddenly evaporated. In exchange for a further study into competition and a text which juggles with the words ‘may’ and ‘must’, eight of the fifteen Members have surrendered what Parliament had achieved. The fact that a directive is coming into being was suddenly more important than its exact content. The ultimate proposal is very reminiscent of Spanish and Italian acts concerning monopoly ports with a small hinterland around the Mediterranean. The application to other parts of Europe will lead to more industrial disputes and abuse, particularly in the North Sea ports. On various occasions, port labourers in the present and future Member States have made it clear in great numbers that they find this unacceptable.
Under these conditions, the directive is counterproductive and should therefore not be adopted. This proposal should be rejected on Thursday."@en1
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"Karin Cat"1
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