Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-05-Speech-1-132"
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"en.20050905.21.1-132"2
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".
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, during August, six major accidents cast a gloomy shadow over commercial air transport throughout the world. Every one of them affected European passengers. Faced with these tragic events, I, on behalf of the entire Commission, would like to offer my condolences to the victims’ families and to assure them of our profound sympathy.
The Commission reacted immediately to the accidents by stepping up its contacts with the civil aviation authorities of the Member States concerned in order to gather together all relevant information. The Commission dispatched a group of experts to Cyprus in order to assess, at the scene, the air transport situation and to identify the specific needs and difficulties. The Commission contributed towards having an action programme adopted by the managing directors of European civil aviation, who met in Romania on 27 August. Over and above these reactions, however, we must continue to act resolutely in increasing air safety, in order to enhance passenger confidence and, furthermore, to confront the rapid growth in air traffic.
Community measures are vital. In actual fact, the main objective of an initial proposal in the transport sphere was to increase air safety. As guardian of the Treaties, the Commission will strictly monitor whether all the Member States correctly implement existing Community law. In this context, it will instruct the European Aviation Safety Agency to carry out inspections of the competent national authorities. It is imperative that these authorities perform all of the required checks and dedicate the necessary resources to them.
I would now like to lay emphasis on pursuing and strengthening legislative initiatives. We must improve transparency for the benefit of passengers and to do that we must draw up a Community black list that will need to include all carriers that have been grounded. Such a measure will enable us to inform the public but also to avoid different approaches from one Member State to another. In actual fact, banning measures must be enforced throughout the entire EU territory and must be taken on the basis of a common set of criteria. In order to achieve this, the Commission must be able to promptly extend the banning measures taken at national level to the entire EU territory: citizens from across the whole of the EU must have the same guarantees.
The proposal for a Regulation on the identity of air carriers, which was submitted to the European Parliament in February, offers the possibility of promptly implementing such a measure, and at this point I should like to congratulate Mrs De Veyrac, the rapporteur for the Committee on Transport and Tourism, who took the initiative to complete the text proposed by the Commission and on which the Council of Ministers issued an agreement in principle. Thanks to the work of your Committee on Transport and Tourism – I take advantage of this moment to also thank its chairman, Mr Costa – we will be able to have a far more comprehensive system at our disposal.
The second aspect concerns the mechanisms for monitoring third country aircraft, which must be strengthened immediately. Ramp inspections must be more comprehensive and better targeted. To achieve that, the Commission will very shortly submit proposals aimed at transferring to the European Aviation Safety Agency the management of the safety assessment of foreign aircraft - I am referring to the SAFA programme - and at implementing an early warning system between the Member States, the EASA and the Commission.
Thirdly, the Community must have at its disposal a coherent and uniform set of rules covering all safety-related issues, and, in order to prepare and implement those rules, the role of our European Aviation Safety Agency must be consolidated. In this context, I am going to propose a new regulation from autumn extending the remit of the Agency to encompass third country air operations, pilots’ licences and aircraft. This extension will allow the European Aviation Safety Agency to intervene effectively in order to ensure that both European and third country carriers are monitored.
Finally, for my fourth point, Madam President, I would like to stress that moves to strengthen the European aviation safety system must be accompanied by actions relating to third countries and to the ICAO, the International Civil Aviation Organisation. The safety standards in force outside the European Union must be raised. The European Union is prepared to continue providing its technical assistance to developing countries and to play a major role within the ICAO. Only this morning, I received a government minister from Latin America, to whom I explained that we were at the disposal of the States concerned to assist them in strengthening technical cooperation in this area. I also hope – I say this before Parliament – that the European Union can occupy a place as such within the ICAO, precisely in order to play an even more decisive role in increasing safety levels.
To summarise, ladies and gentlemen, I can state that, even before the serious accidents that took place this summer, the European Union, through this draft Regulation on passenger information, had already anticipated the need to offer passengers the opportunity of knowing the identity of air carriers. I hope that the entire text, which has been enhanced by the work of your committee, can promptly be adopted by Parliament and can receive the approval of the Member States. In this way, we can actually have a black list by the end of the year, based on a set of criteria harmonised among all of the Member States. We will thus negotiate a decisive stage in improving the safety of air transport."@en1
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