Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-17-Speech-3-296"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20010117.9.3-296"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, Commissioner, road accidents are the most frequent cause of death and serious injury among children and young people, in fact generally among EU citizens under the age of 45. We must no longer accept this as a stroke of fate but must do something about it. The condition, however, is that we stop believing that road safety depends primarily on how well road users behave or remain in control of themselves.
Apart from setting out a clear obligation, Articles 41 and 94 of the EC Treaty also provide us with the legal basis which some Members of this House doubt for a great number of effective measures to improve road user safety. It is up to us finally to attach adequate political priority to this issue. In fact, there is perhaps hardly any policy area in which the common responsibility of the EU, the Member States, regional and local authorities and the appropriate organisations is recognised so clearly. Subsidiarity is, therefore, particularly applicable here.
That is precisely why we should not underestimate the added value of EU measures versus Member State efforts. Calculations of the economic costs of traffic accidents show that they are considerably higher than the costs of preventing traffic accidents. So that justifies the call for increased financial resources even in times of economic austerity. But beware, let us make no mistake. It is not always the case that the more money we put in, the higher the level of safety we can achieve.
This can be demonstrated by information campaigns on best practice in the EU states and binding measures to reduce the causes of accidents, such as alcohol, drug-taking and the use of medicines, as also a directive on expanding safety tests which will make the car industry take a more creative approach and promoting the European New Car Assessment Programme (EuroNCAP). I congratulate the rapporteur, Mrs Hedkvist Petersen, on her excellent report and urge you to endorse it."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples