Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-02-02-Speech-4-021"
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"en.20060202.4.4-021"2
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".
Mr President, our adoption today of the regulation on driving and rest times will without doubt be a step forward in that the daily minimum will be increased, the maximum permitted driving time reduced, the digital tachograph introduced with the intention that manipulations be prevented and it be made possible to check the past 28 days, and, not least, the length of the journey – in terms both of distance and the time taken on it – to the place of assignment will now be counted as working time. All these things count as progress, and that is to the credit not least of our rapporteur, Mr Markov, who, right up to the very end of the process, has endeavoured splendidly to represent this House’s views, and it is for that reason that most of my group will be voting in favour.
It has to be said, though, that there is one serious reason why I shall not be voting in favour of the conciliation result, and that is the Council’s refusal to allow it to be coupled with the Working Time Directive. Despite many offers of compromise on the part of Parliament, the Council has not found it possible to make concessions on this front.
The driver’s working time does, however, include all his other duties, such as loading and unloading, repairs, filling in forms, all of which are tiring and therefore have a direct effect on safety on the road. It is for that reason that compliance with the working time directive must be monitored as well as driving and rest times checked up on. That is why it has to be possible for offences against the working time directive to be prosecuted and to incur sanctions. The Council was not able to do that, and it also owes us an explanation for that.
It took a week for the reason for the Council’s refusal to become clear, when it turned out that ten Member States have not, to date, transposed the Working Time Directive at all, even though the deadline for them to do so expired in March 2005. The ten Member States in question are Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. It is no wonder that the Council refused to allow it to be coupled with another piece of legislation. I wish the Commission had supplied us with this information earlier on in these proceedings, for then, I believe, the fact that this directive had not even been transposed in ten Member States might well have caused our debate on this subject to take a slightly different course.
Driving and resting times, working time and monitoring belong together. The Council has chosen to stand in the way of that, and that is why, today, this result gets a ‘no’ vote from me."@en1
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