Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-17-Speech-2-011"
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"en.20060117.5.2-011"2
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".
Mr President, I am much obliged to the Vice-President for the clarity with which he has spoken and for his willingness to engage with this House’s factual arguments.
Fifthly, the directive, as amended, is right from the economic and consumer point of view, since it is vital to exports and imports, and of benefit to our consumers, that all ports be regulated even more efficiently and economically.
I do therefore believe that fair market access combined with protection for jobs and of the existing businesses’ interests is the best solution. You have before you 140 amendments to that effect, and I urge you to vote on their substance rather than turning away from making a decision based on facts. If you throw out the Commission proposal lock, stock and barrel – that is to say, not just the part that deals with competition, but also the part covering transparency – then there will be no European regulation, and, in its absence, nobody will have the certainty needed to plan ahead or any certainty as to what the law is.
Do not let yourselves be swayed by yesterday’s strikes. I thought it inconceivable that it could have been the trade unions that, by the use of false arguments, induced these people to come here. Let us not allow the flares fired off by some of the demonstrators to show port workers in general in a bad light. Let us come to a fair decision in this matter – that is my plea to the House.
Let me remind the House of the fact that all the arguments for or against a directive on sea ports have been the subject of intensive debate for months, and that there are two things that were determined as long ago as the Committee on Transport and Tourism’s hearing last June. One is that everyone involved in what goes on in ports – from the port companies to the shipping lines – is in favour of unambiguous rules on transparency to create fair competition between sea ports. The same can be said of all the groups in this House, and I might mention that none of them, in the course of the Transport Committee’s deliberations, have tabled any substantial amendments to the provisions on transparency in the Commission proposal, and so I find it quite incomprehensible that four groups should move that the Commission proposal be rejected outright, for in so doing they are preventing the introduction of the rules on transparency. It follows that, if you are in favour of transparency and fair competition, you cannot under any circumstances throw out that part of the directive.
Turning now to the issue of market access, it was clear from the hearing that there are very divergent interests at stake here. The providers of port services, in other words the businesses currently operating in ports – container terminals, watermen, lightermen and so on – do not, of course want these things regulated at European level; they would like to see them remain in the national sphere. Those who use port services, for example shippers and the business sectors that produce and ship goods, believe – and I think they are right to do so – that market access requires a European regulation. That is why I believe that the right, laid down quite clearly in the EC Treaty, to establish oneself and offer services, must apply in sea ports as much as anywhere else and that we need to bring in fair and unambiguous regulations to make sure that it does.
I shall now proceed to set out, in brief, just five arguments in favour of European regulation of market access.
Firstly, it is to the benefit of new service providers that market access should be facilitated in the first place by means of regular invitations to tender for public leased areas, in the absence of which no new provider of port services will ever have a chance to get into the market.
Secondly, it is to the benefit of existing businesses handling goods in ports that these transitional provisions are intended to secure public leases, in theory at least for a period of up to 46 years. What we are proposing does not, then, do anything to jeopardise any business or put even one single job at risk; on the contrary, the long transition periods make it possible for existing businesses to continue operating.
Our proposals are the right ones in terms of the interests of the port workers, since we want to delete self-handling from the directive. We take the view that there is no need for European rules on self-handling, since it is not even possible in container traffic, which is the typical activity of a modern harbour. The fact is that there is not one single container vessel that possesses the loading gear that would enable its own crew to load or unload containers.
I have already explained how the long transitional provisions secure the port workers’ jobs, and, at the end of the day, there will be no danger of social dumping or of any deterioration in working conditions, for it is stated quite explicitly in this directive that it does not interfere with Member States’ social security arrangements or with free collective bargaining.
Fourthly, our proposals are the right ones when it comes to securing the interests of shippers and of the businesses that use them, since, if new businesses come into the market, they can make their choice among the most efficient and best-value service providers and will not – as they currently do in some ports – have to contend with a monopoly situation in which they have to take what is put in front of them."@en1
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