Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-06-13-Speech-3-182"
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"en.20010613.5.3-182"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, you may rest assured that, unlike Mr Gollnisch, I will not call for every last detail of maritime safety to be resolved.
Although we welcome the speedy attempts to ensure the safety of transport by sea, we also remember that the ‘Erika I’ package has still not been adopted in full. Once the initial excitement is over, the institutions, including Parliament, relapse into their slow procedures, which is a pity. We must keep up the pace for the ‘Erika II’ package, and I hope it will not be plagued by subtle attempts to slip in amendments that may be relevant but have no chance at all of being adopted by the Council, with a view to slowing down the procedures. For the object of this package is to establish an effective arsenal of legal provisions to ensure maritime safety, after all the disasters that have occurred, and to prevent pollution.
On the report on the monitoring system, we totally support the rapporteur’s proposals, especially those seeking to make it compulsory as from 2007 to install a black box in all ships entering EU ports and on a system of automatic identification of ships, so that they can be monitored by the coastal authorities.
The directive will also require Member States to determine ports of refuge for ships in distress. This provision will, no doubt, pose some problems and we will have to be very careful how we implement it.
Turning to the European Maritime Safety Agency, we welcome its establishment but we would have preferred it to serve as the point of departure for a future European coastal agency. That is not the case, but with time and experience, that is what it could turn into. We would like it to be independent, whereas the Commission proposals in fact leave it little margin for manoeuvre. We are sorry that our proposal to include representatives of the NGOs and trade unions on the administrative board were rejected. These voluntary players often make pertinent proposals and could be objective and constructive allies for the agency.
With regard to where the agency will be based, before the final choice is made, we would like to see a number of criteria introduced, such as the frequency of accidents at sea, the intensity of maritime traffic and the maritime infrastructure of the candidate countries concerned.
Finally, the third report concerns the European Fund, modelled more or less on the IOPC Fund, which was unable, a year and a half after the
disaster, to compensate the victims, although the appropriate authorities had made the necessary financial promises and set early deadlines. We fully endorse the main objectives, such as the aim of raising the compensation ceiling, given that damages for the
disaster came to EUR 300 million, whereas the IOPC Fund has a ceiling of no more than EUR 200 million. We think it is crucial to extend the compensation to include environmental damage. In fact, this would be the first time that the financial evaluation of environmental costs was given in figures and that compensation was paid for repairing damage to the environment. The Committee on Transport's attitude in this regard is difficult to understand and tends in the opposite direction. We regret that.
Lastly, on contributions to the fund, we believe that those who own and charter the ships should also have to contribute to this fund."@en1
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