Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-11-Speech-1-168"

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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Commission’s endeavours to reduce the large number of accidents and casualties and significantly improve the situation in Member States are certainly welcome, and indeed the rapporteur has had a few things to say about that. Do we really think, however, that these measures will result in fewer accidents in these countries? I believe that the exact opposite will be the case. These measures will mean the commitment of funds in these countries that can be used for precisely these measures. I should like to comment on the costs, which are always set out. Naturally, I am concerned about the number of casualties. I read today, with regard to REACH, the amount by which we could reduce healthcare expenditure if we managed to improve this situation. The figures are correct, of course, but we shall never achieve them. The only thing we shall achieve with this document is red tape, even though we all insist that the EU rejects this and wants to reduce it. Yet the EU Member States are well-placed to deal with this problem. They collect their own statistics, they take the necessary measures, they know the local situation much better than we in Brussels or Strasbourg do. We are deceiving ourselves if we suppose that our statistics are able to tell the Member States anything they do not already know; we are on the wrong track. Taking driving as an example, we cannot hope to influence driving practices in Sicily or Finland from Brussels. This can only be done by taking action locally, and therefore such action should be regulated purely by means of subsidiarity. I should like to offer a rather exaggerated analogy. Say someone were to tell me today that many people are injured falling off ladders whilst hanging curtains. There are some countries that traditionally do not use curtains and thus do not experience such accidents. Who would try to make a comparison? That is the way of things in many other cases, too. In my opinion, therefore, we are on the wrong track here. We should re-think these measures and focus on bilateral measures that will really lead to a reduction in accidents, as this proposal will not achieve that."@en1

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