Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-02-01-Speech-3-202"
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"en.20060201.19.3-202"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, first of all I would very much like to thank the Commission for having produced a very ambitious report on the application of the Postal Directive, which forms the basis for today's debate and tomorrow's vote here in the European Parliament.
It has become very clear – and this is also expressed in the resolution we adopted in the Committee on Transport and Tourism – that the journey we started in 1992 with the Green Paper on the development of postal services in the European Union has continued successfully to today. We have succeeded in reaching a compromise between comprehensive, high-quality provision of postal services and ever increasing competition in the sector, two essentially contradictory aims. That, of course, is the specific aim in 2006, if the obligations in the current Postal Directive also have to be met. I am delighted, Commissioner, that the Commission has put forward a very ambitious timetable, that the prospective study laid down in the directive has now been commissioned, and that, on the basis of this prospective study, we will then be in a position to take further decisions.
Obviously, we cannot be satisfied with what we have achieved so far; we must ensure that we complete the internal market in this field too. But the postal market is not telecommunications, it is not electricity, and it is not gas. We therefore need to take a closer look at how we can achieve further developments here. In our report we have tried to raise a series of questions to which, of course, we would very much like answers, Commissioner, when you present the studies that you have planned for this year. This will give us the materials we need to be able to reach decisions.
The question is: how can we ensure that postal services work throughout the European Union – not just in the big cities, in Greater London, in the Ruhr valley, in Berlin, in Madrid or in Rome, but in all regions of the EU? How can we permanently guarantee the high quality that we now enjoy even in cross-border regions, and how can we do this in a sector that – as the Commission's communication also says – is continuing to grow? I can still remember the debates in this Chamber when the opinion was that postal services would die out anyway, because we could use faxes and e-mail. Postal services are a growth sector. So, how can we mobilise market forces to develop new products and thus to create more jobs in the sector?
These are questions to which we in the committee expect answers from the Commission over the course of this year. They are questions that we have included in this report.
If we can work together very intensively this year – the Commission and the European Parliament, and the Council, which is not very involved at the moment, will join in at some point – then we can enable further developments in this sector that, at the end of the day, will live up to all of these conditions.
I am very grateful to all my fellow Members who worked with such commitment on this topic. Postal services affect all of us: in every one of our electoral districts there are many postal customers, many post offices and sorting offices, in some cases run by several postal service providers. There are therefore always very lively discussions both in committee and here in Parliament. Many thanks to all those who helped me produce this report. I would also like to be quite clear: a rapporteur is always pleased when only a few amendments are tabled. The Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats has tabled an amendment that certainly helps to improve the wording of a point that had not come out of the voting in committee very well. I hope that it will meet with broad approval. We will then have produced, on the whole, a thorough report which puts the European Parliament in a good position to complete its further legislative tasks successfully."@en1
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