Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-28-Speech-3-424"
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"en.20050928.30.3-424"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by thanking Mr Vatanen for his excellent work. Over the next few months, the Commission will provide an assessment of the third Road Safety Action Programme and Mr Vatanen’s comprehensive and balanced report will provide useful fodder for the considerations that the Commission needs to take to prepare this mid-term review.
In order to achieve our consistent collective objective of reducing the number of deaths on the roads by 2010, above and beyond the initiatives that I have already mentioned, the exchanges of good practice and the initial considerations need to be as open as possible, and relate particularly to the adoption of measures targeted at professional drivers and at young drivers, who are particularly prone to accidents. Mr Vatanen’s report is therefore very timely. I would like to thank him for his very open reflections on the problem as a whole and I will listen attentively, Mr President, to the comments by the Members, who I know are keen to make progress on the good cause of road safety.
This report demonstrates the need for common initiatives at European level. To follow up on the 2001 White Paper on European transport policy, the European Union had already set the objective of halving the number of deaths on the roads of the 15 Member States at that time by 2010. The benefit of this objective was that it mobilised each country within the framework of its national competences. The results are noticeable. Today, in the enlarged EU, some Member States have made remarkable progress in implementing credible and dissuasive control and sanction policies. In other countries, however, progress has been more modest and shows that considerable efforts remain to be made.
We must recognise that the Union’s policy on road safety has remained in the embryonic stages for too long, because of the subsidiarity principle. You just have to think back to the unsuccessful debate on setting a general blood alcohol limit; and the current difficulties in making certain Member States adopt the revised directive on driving licences, even though it is essential for preventing fraud, also bear witness to this.
Without anticipating the mid-term review that the Commission will publish shortly, three points in Mr Vatanen’s report are worth commenting on. Firstly, we need to ensure that the essential rules, whether with regard to speed limits, blood alcohol limits or the requirement to wear a seatbelt, are respected. At the moment, we cannot help but notice that Member States’ interventions against drivers who breach these rules are limited, in the absence of cross-border cooperation.
I am particularly grateful to Mr Vatanen for advocating considerably closer cooperation between Member States to control and deal with offences. I would point out to you that the Commission intends to launch an initiative next year to improve the organisation of cross-border enforcement.
My second comment relates to the improvement of infrastructure. Progress could be made everywhere and, in some Member States, considerable efforts are needed. The European Union, via the cofinancing that it provides under the Structural Funds, already contributes to the construction of safer and more modern infrastructure. A legislative instrument, as Mr Vatanen said, could prove necessary to make impact assessments, audits and road safety inspections, including dealing with black spots, more systematic.
My third comment is that technological innovation in vehicles is a decisive element in road safety. A dialogue has been launched between the Commission and the European automotive industry. This relates to the initiative known as CARS 21, as part of which your Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection will soon organise a Parliamentary forum. The technical standards needed to enable innovations play an important role, but we must, as Mr Vatanen points out, properly understand the costs and benefits of these innovations before we bring them into widespread use. It is in this spirit that the Commission is currently assessing the possibilities for new initiatives to encourage the installation of mirrors that eliminate the blind spot and the use of daytime running lights.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would remind you that opinion polls show that European citizens put road safety at the top of their list of concerns, thus echoing what Mr Vatanen explained so well, illustrating his speech with some personal memories, which were very moving.
The European Union cannot continue to do nothing in the face of the citizens’ worries. Of course, we must take subsidiarity into account, but, in view of the increase in international traffic on trans-European networks, in other words the number of foreign drivers on the main arterial routes of each country, we cannot avoid asking ourselves whether the limits currently set on the EU’s actions are the right ones and whether we should simply decide, in the name of subsidiarity, to leave the Member States to face this scourge alone."@en1
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