Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-11-28-Speech-3-144"
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"en.20071128.18.3-144"2
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Mr President, Mr Vice-President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, even though we are compelled to hold a ‘technical’ debate, as the Commission Vice-President has said, we are taking a major political step forward today.
The third point concerns getting the Agency up and running. On this point I have one key question on my mind, and I would address it to everyone, in particular the Commission. We quite rightly saw fit to separate out safety from everything else by creating 25 European agencies. That was a major decision taken some time ago. I now wonder, given that these agencies are not yet operational, whether it might not be worth considering whether to have one single European Agency working through 25 offshoots in the different countries. This is a fundamental issue and would help us find a positive solution to the allied problems of interoperability and safety at European level.
Ever since the first Treaty was drawn up in the late 1950s, European transport policy has had three goals: to create a single market, to connect networks which were separate from one another – so as to create a single market for and between modes of transport, of course – and to make networks interoperable at the construction stage. Interoperability is not a technical matter, therefore; it really is a precondition for establishing Europe-wide markets which are absolutely necessary and the stated aim of the Treaty.
Major progress has been achieved in almost all respects, yet the railway sector lags behind somewhat. We find ourselves today with the same goals as those in the 1960s. The reasons are different, and this is not the time to explore them, but this point needs to be made in order to strengthen our conviction that we are taking a major step and that it is crucial for us to succeed.
Interoperability is therefore a key condition for building, and being able to move around on, networks free from technical barriers which prevent full freedom of movement for engines and carriages. As such, it is a fundamental step that had to be taken and must be taken as rapidly as possible.
The Commission was right to stop distinguishing between interoperability on high-speed networks and traditional networks, and hence to push as far as possible in this direction.
It was also right to put the problem of safety on the table at the same time, since safety is sometimes presented – and I need to tread very carefully here – as a reason for attaching conditions to interoperability. How can an engine-driver be made to cross a border when he may not understand the language of the country to which he travels? How can a locomotive be made to cross a border when it might not be perfectly suited to the network on the other side? I could go on.
The Commission therefore did well to bring the two elements together. We absolutely must guarantee safety, but within the bounds of a system that is interoperable, because if safety is put first as a condition for preventing interoperability, there is something amiss in this business. The very fact that it was decided to create a European Agency dealing with these matters and others, as we shall see, is undoubtedly a sign that we are taking things seriously.
What has Parliament done? Parliament has broadly approved the Commission’s proposals, with a few recommendations intended to make the system more interoperable. In the report on interoperability, Parliament envisages setting deadlines by which authorisations should be granted, in relation to existing rolling stock, of course. It also advocates that the burden of proof of the fact that something is not interoperable – even on safety grounds – should be shifted onto Member States: in other words the initial assumption is that, once certified, everything can go everywhere, unless someone can give me a serious reason why that should not be the case. Thirdly, Parliament envisages that the retrofitting of all existing rolling stock should be eligible for state aid. Those, I believe, are the contributions made by this House.
The same applies to safety. Here too, we have attempted to say that certification should be mandatory by a certain date: 2010 is our proposal. This should allay everyone’s fears, without exception, given that everyone is treated in similar fashion, rather than continuing to regard the monopolies still running railway services as automatically being particularly competent and therefore exempt from these obligations."@en1
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