Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-11-Speech-1-161"
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"en.20050411.19.1-161"2
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".
Mr President, the continent of Europe and my country, Greece, have something in common. They are both peninsulars, with sea on three sides and land on one. There are thousands of miles of coastline and thousands of large and small ports. We, as Greeks, have been very familiar with this means of transport for 3 000 years: the first cargo recorded in maritime history was the golden fleece carried by the Argonauts 5 500 years ago.
Maritime transport is the most environmentally friendly. We do not drill through mountains, we do not cut down trees and one vessel can carry a great deal of cargo and a great many passengers. We have a large volume of work: approximately 40% of traffic in Europe, according to the report. In other words, there are large profits to be made, profits for shipowners and profits for operators. However, we also have particularly high unemployment, with unemployed seafarers in Poland, Portugal and Greece. So we have very rich maritime transport, but we also have unemployed seafarers. In Piraeus, once the biggest port in Europe, one in two people walking along the street is an unemployed seafarer. So we need to find a way to introduce a measure so that every ship which calls at a European port employs a number of European seafarers. We do not want ships working in Europe with non-European seafarers while European seafarers are out of work.
Another issue to which we need to turn our attention is safety. The Commission issued a directive several years ago. A civil servant, obviously serving certain interests, failed to pass it on. There was a shipwreck in the Aegean and 82 people drowned, precisely because the crew had not been trained as provided for in the directive, which had not arrived. So what do we need? We need better safety on board, we need to be strict about human life and, above all, we need to secure work for European seafarers, for reasons of equality and democracy; work which they are losing, even though, I repeat, the benefit and profit to shipowners is from European citizens. That is what justice means and I would like the Commissioner to find a way for the work of European seafarers to be secured and not to disappear."@en1
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