Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-25-Speech-1-076"
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"en.19991025.6.1-076"2
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"Mr President, this is a proposal for regulations which focuses on a technical point, that is, the obligation to fit a speedometer on so-called minor vehicles, meaning those with two or three wheels and, in certain cases, special ones which have four wheels. Given that today’s measure is optional, it provides an alibi, above all for vehicles which have in some way been souped up and made much faster so that they do not comply with the rules relating to speed and by extension to road safety, which often leads to serious accidents involving young people in particular. The proposal is therefore not purely technical; on the contrary, this small series of rules will become an essential part of everyday life. For this reason, we have put forward proposals and some amendments have been adopted which aim to emphasise how important the subject of road safety is today, not only in individual States, but in a Community context. Moreover, Delors’ White Paper stressed this crucial issue and highlighted the very specific commitment to reducing the number of road accidents within a few years, especially the more serious ones. The nature of this commitment is more moral than legal, and more social than technical.
We have followed this proposal carefully, especially because our committee which adopted it, wanted to underline how important it is not to tackle road safety according to sectors, but according to a more comprehensive and unitary vision: a true road safety package. On the other hand, in accordance with the Treaty of Amsterdam, road safety has become a Community issue. We have overcome all the resistance which often sprang from the conflicting interests of vehicle manufacturers and the European Union and today, finally, we are putting all our efforts into safety in order to safeguard peoples’ lives and health.
In time, this series of regulations will be subject to amendments, partly because of technological innovations that are the most wide-ranging instruments we can use for protecting people. Now, how can we provide for amending these regulations? This question highlights a problem which is beyond the scope of this small proposal and calls for a more far-reaching proposal – commitology, which Mr Harbour mentioned. This is a focal point, which I invite the Commission, as well as all my colleagues, to reflect on. We have made quite an innovative choice in the sense that by opting for an advisory committee and not a regulatory committee, we are aiming for a certain balance between the Commission and the Council and, by somehow transcending the individual States but without humiliating them, the Commission will retain certain powers of coordination and adaptation, in an outlook which rises above the interests of individual countries that might sometimes mount resistance to such delicate matters.
However, from an initial analysis it appears that the Commission is – I will not say indifferent, but rather is in agreement with the Council’s statement. Indeed it is obvious that, when it comes to adapting regulations, each institution tends to feather its own nest. In this case, however, I think – and I would ask the Commission to confirm this – that the Commission and the Council favour a regulatory committee more.
To be clear, I would like to remind you that this directive already anticipates a deferment to 1 July 2001 for all vehicles, and to 1 July 2002 for mopeds, due to problems of technical adaptation, not to mention the possibility of reaching a conciliation procedure which might postpone the directive’s implementation indefinitely. However, if the Commission undertook to make a horizontal proposal, that is, a more wide-ranging one, which did not only cover the scope of this individual proposal but a whole sector, for example the whole transport sector, and did not wish to extend it to an even more general subject – which however, we will have to do at some point because commitology is an issue which relates to many subjects, and one regulation has already been derogated so we can no longer go back to the former management committee, regulatory committee or advisory committee – therefore, if, in a fairly short time, the Commission took a more comprehensive position, then we could refrain from making this type of proposal. This is obviously my personal position, which should also be evaluated by the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, because this would naturally represent a broader and therefore stronger objective with respect to the more limited objective. If this does not happen, everyone will follow their own path and it will be up to the institutions to decide democratically."@en1
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