Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-14-Speech-3-270"
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"en.20051214.18.3-270"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to start by thanking the rapporteur, Mr Schwab, and the shadow rapporteurs for their commitment and their constructive cooperation, without which an agreement would not have been reached at second reading.
The first declaration reads:
‘Parliament, the Council and the Commission declare that, in order to cover all aspects related to the health and safety of agricultural and forestry tractors in one harmonising directive, Directive 2003/37/EC on type-approval of agricultural and forestry tractors, their trailers and interchangeable towed machinery, together with their systems, components and separate technical units needs to be modified so as to address all the relevant risks of the Machinery Directive. Such a modification of Directive 2003/37/EC should include an amendment of the Machinery Directive, in order to delete the expression ‘for the risks’ in Article 1(2)(e), first indent.’
The second declaration is as follows: ‘The Commission recognises the need to include in the Agricultural and Forestry Tractors Directives further requirements for risks not yet covered by those directives. To that end, the Commission is considering appropriate measures that include references to the United Nations regulations, CN and ISO standards, and OECD codes.’
I hope that that answers any remaining questions to everyone’s satisfaction. I should like to reiterate my thanks for the genuinely positive and constructive cooperation afforded by the House, and also to thank you for your attention.
The situation in which we find ourselves today could be aptly summed up by the famous proverb, ‘good things come to those who wait’. The history of the revision of the Machinery Directive is a very long one. It originally began with a recommendation by the ‘Molitor group’, which was a forerunner of the present Commission’s ‘better regulation’ initiative.
When the Commission presented its proposal for a directive in early 2001, following lengthy discussions with all those involved, no one expected that it would take five years and a record-breaking 43 Council working group meetings to complete this revision, to say nothing of Parliament’s work. The length of these discussions was due to the considerable size and complexity of the sector affected by the directive, by which I mean the mechanical engineering sector, which covers a very diverse range of products, including machinery, mechanical appliances and their components. At the same time, however, it is also a sector that is of crucial importance to the EU economy, and one of the best-performing industrial sectors. In 2004, the mechanical engineering sector in the European Union produced goods worth EUR 402 billion and employed over 2.6 million engineers, technicians and other workers, most of whom were highly qualified. Mechanical engineering production in the EU exceeds that in Japan and the USA by a long way. The European Union is the world’s largest exporter of machinery and mechanical appliances with exports worth EUR 150 billion, which puts us ahead of the USA with EUR 62 billion and Japan with EUR 67 billion. This is proof that we are dealing with a sector which can rightly be called a jewel of European industry, and which therefore really does merit particular attention.
Now that we have a recommendation concerning amendments to the Common Position, we are very close to completing the legislative process involved in drafting a new Machinery Directive. I am delighted to be able to tell you that the Commission can accept in full the compromise reached by Parliament and the Council. In actual fact, the outcome of this compromise represents a significant improvement over the Machinery Directive 98/37/EC that is currently in force, and, as Mr Schwab has already mentioned, it is an excellent example of better regulation.
The scope has now been defined in more detail and ambiguities ironed out, which means that legal certainty has been improved. The Directive had previously been given a number of different interpretations, which will no longer be the case. A much clearer distinction has been made between this and other directives, such as the Lift Directive or the Low Voltage Directive. Implementation of the Directive, including market surveillance and the monitoring of bodies charged with the task of certification by the Member States and notified to the Commission as such, has been made more efficient as a result of Parliament’s far-reaching amendments at first reading.
The manufacturers of certain types of machinery which the scope of the Directive has been extended to cover will now also reap the benefits of the internal market. Users and workers will benefit from improved health protection and consumer protection, with such improvements having been made on the basis of our experience with the present Directive.
Turning to the highly contentious matter of the relation in which other markings stand to the CE marking, I should like to confirm that this issue will be resolved in the course of the revision of the ‘new approach’, as stated in the following Commission declaration. I shall read out the Commission’s formal declaration once again:
‘Without prejudice to respect for Community legislation, the Commission, within the context of the revision of the new approach planned for mid-2006, will clarify the conditions for the affixing of other markings, whether national, European or private, in relation to the CE marking.’
As far as the equally contentious issue of tractors is concerned, I should like to make it known that the Commission is absolutely committed to the principles set out in the two declarations, which I should also like to read out again."@en1
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