Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-30-Speech-4-033"
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"en.20001130.1.4-033"2
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"Mr President, today we are discussing maritime safety on the basis of three reports, on which I would like to congratulate the rapporteurs warmly on.
Immediately after the
disaster the Commissioner started working on an extensive legislation package, and in all honesty, I am compelled to say that apart from the liability aspect, the legislation really was not bad at all. The problem was, and remains, compliance with legislation, inspections and sanctions in the event of non-compliance. Today we are discussing the safety of ships and flag states, port state control and the classification societies. Unfortunately, pressure of time means I have to be selective.
Firstly, the issue of the classification societies. It does not really matter that they are supposed to have maximum unlimited liability. The majority of them cannot afford it anyway. What is important is to ensure that when they make a serious and inexcusable mistake, they are shut down, i.e. we must close them, put a stop to their activities, end of story. That would keep them on their toes a bit more. It would also seem to be better than imposing sanctions that do not yield anything.
Then there are the flag states. I personally am in favour of banning ships that sail under cheap blacklisted flags from the ports and territorial waters of the Union. However I can see the practical difficulties associated with this. Is it not worrying that the sister ship of the
the
carried on sailing round undisturbed for more than a year before it was detained and sent to the scrap heap? Why was the
not taken out of service by its classification society? What did the flag state actually do? Various states, which are completely irresponsible to my mind, offer registrations that take a mere twenty minutes via the Internet. It is in every sense a virtual affair, with no form of inspection.
Mrs Sanders has already mentioned Cambodia. Cambodia advertises this form of registration in the shipping news. What is the Commissioner doing about ships that have been registered in this manner? Are we going to wait until they are detained? Once, twice, until there is oil on the North Sea beaches. It is obvious that a bonafide company does not register its ships in Cambodia.
The second example is Honduras. 750 ships were in an unspeakably poor condition even by Honduran standards. I would like to ask the Commissioner whether we follow these ships with a tracking and tracing system? Because surely the question arises as to which flag states
accepted these floating wrecks? Where are they now? I do not think we can continue to operate with any credibility without a tracking system of this kind. Other countries besides those of the EU must take a firm hand with the flag states. Some of our Member States make a mess of their own registers. A strict test must also be applied under real life conditions to those countries that have systems which look good on paper but which do not amount to anything in reality. If they fail the test then the same rule applies to them as it does to other untrustworthy flag states: we do not want their ships in our ports."@en1
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"Maria S"1
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