Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-27-Speech-2-304"
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"en.20050927.22.2-304"2
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"Mr President, this report proposes the harmonisation of rail passenger rights and compensation liabilities throughout the European Union. Such legislation faces the opposition of national railway companies who know they will suffer increased administrative burdens, the cost of which will be passed on to passengers.
Mr Sterckx says that we should not tinker with international agreements which are already satisfactory. He says that we must not take over the role of railway company marketing managers. Above all, he says that the system must benefit passengers. Only an EU politician could say all that and then propose extending the scope of legislation. There is already a perfectly good international agreement in place between 42 nations, including many non-EU countries, to facilitate cross-border railway travel. In 2002 international railway companies signed a voluntary Charter containing quality standards for rail passenger services – the COTIF Convention.
We cannot legislate, for example, for French, German and British railways. They all operate under very different conditions. National governments, in conjunction with railway operators, should decide what regulation is appropriate, not the European Union. To be fair, the Commission only wanted regulation to cover cross-border rail travel, but Mr Sterckx goes further by proposing regulation for in-country domestic rail travel.
In another report from the Committee on Transport and Tourism concerning the certification of train crews, the rapporteur, Mr Savary, calls for the psychological testing of train crews. May I suggest that psychological testing be extended to the rapporteurs of this Parliament? Perhaps a simple word association test would be useful. If in response rapporteurs used the words 'integration', 'harmonisation' or 'regulation', they should be immediately disqualified from holding office. This might possibly cut down the amount of this kind of nonsense, but not, I suspect, until we have first legislated for harmonised and integrated psychology tests."@en1
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