Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-04-20-Speech-2-025"
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"en.20100420.3.2-025"2
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"Mr President, even though thousands of people find themselves in great difficulties today, I believe that this volcanic eruption sounds like a real call to order: a call to order that urges us to review our relationship with the weather in the transport sector and, above all, our excessive dependence on air transport, which has gradually and, at times, without our knowledge, taken the place of all other means of transport. That is even more essential given that, today, no one can say, of course, whether this volcanic eruption will stop or how this cloud is going to move in the weeks and months to come.
This means that we must primarily – and I support both the Commission and the Council on this – continue to abide by the precautionary principle and the principle of safety. I am, moreover, astonished to see that, at one point, in the pharmaceutical sector, the precautionary principle was used to put pressure on the Member States and on Europe to incur expenditure which, in my view, was somewhat ill-considered. Today, another sector seemingly also wants to question or criticise the precaution being taken by the Member States and the European Council. I find that extraordinary. There is no pocket-book precaution. Safety and the common good are the priority.
As for the rest, I believe that we must, of course, develop rail transport. That is the main priority and, as my colleague said, it is clear that here, we have a vision of what our transport system should be; in other words, rail must recapture the market for small and medium distances. I also believe that diversity of transport and modes of transport is important. This, incidentally, is the subject of the White Paper on which we will have to work in committee.
In the short term, I consider that the priority is surely to bring people back home, to compensate passengers and, perhaps, to see what needs to be done for the airlines, but in a very targeted way. I also believe that, structurally speaking, we must provide far greater support for videoconferencing. Videoconferencing as a medium remains extremely incidental and of little relevance to anyone; this applies not only in the case of Parliament, of course, but also more generally. I believe that support for such practices would help us to reduce our dependence on air travel.
Finally, I believe, because the President asked us, that the European Parliament could, perhaps, for its part, review its way of working, by considering, for example, working five days a week for two weeks, rather than three days or three-and-a-half days per week. This would also be a way of setting an example, in the way that we organise our work, of how to be less dependent on air transport, which is, clearly, extremely fragile and subject, as nature is showing us today, to unknowns over which we have no control.
It is truly a question of reviewing the system as a whole, and there will be an opportunity, within the framework of the White Paper, but also within the European Parliament, to review our own method of supporting other means of transport, including in terms of the way we work."@en1
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