Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-28-Speech-4-132"
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".
Mr President, I would like firstly to thank Mr Hatzidakis, rapporteur and President of the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism, for the excellent report which he has carried out concerning the proposed amendment of the framework Directive on the transport of dangerous goods by rail.
Mr President, I wish to repeat my thanks and say that I hope that we will soon conclude the handling of this directive, which will allow the Committee for Standardisation to carry out its work correctly.
The truth is that the framework directive entered into force in January 1997 and the current Commission proposal attempts to resolve the problems of application of the transitional provisions concerning containers for the transport of gases and tanks. In fact, as has been correctly pointed out by Mr Hatzidakis, this directive lays down certain transitional provisions, valid until 1 January of the current year, in order to allow for the termination of certain work by the European Committee for Standardisation. To this end, I would like to express my agreement with Mr Hatzidakis and with certain other speakers and to express my regret that the European Committee for Standardisation has still not reached an agreement which would allow Member States to legislate in accordance with what will be the final regulation, and not to find themselves in a position, if today and in the weeks to come we are not capable of amending the current directive, where they have to legislate to amend the legislation once again within a short space of time, with all the problems which that would entail.
We are talking in the short term about the application of paragraph 4 of Article 6 which refers to containers for the transport of class 2 gas, as well as the corresponding tanks. The time limit for this provision causes problems and therefore we will have to see how this situation can be resolved. We are simply trying to resolve a question which, if the Committee had done its work on time and correctly, we would not be facing now.
On the other hand, the second objective of the present proposal is the amendment of certain provisions concerning derogations, with the aim of making them more precise, as well as the amendment of the procedure for their approval. Given the good reception in this regard, which amounts to an acceptance without amendments on the part of this Parliament, it only remains for me to thank you for your cooperation, study and work.
I would like, however, to make some comments about what has been said in the debate. Firstly, it is clear that a directive is necessary because we are amending a previous directive. In this case, the instrument necessary to amend a directive is another directive.
Passing on to other matters, I would like to reply to Mr Pohjamo that Directive 96/35 on safety advisers, which will enter into force on 1 January 2000, will contribute to the application of the legislation on the transport of dangerous goods, and make it more transparent and more in line with our intentions.
I would like lastly to comment briefly on what Mr Konrad said with regard to the capacity of rail transport and the promotion of railways by the Commission and the Member States. It is true, as he has said, that in certain areas of the network we have a situation of overload, with infrastructures which are already very well used, particularly for the transport of persons, which is the form of use which is currently the priority of all the Member States in terms of their railway policy. In recent years, when the Member States have supported the railway it has mainly been with regard to the transport of persons. These magnificent and successful efforts mean that today we have high speed trains which connect, for example, Brussels and Paris in little more than an hour.
But in fact we still have the problem of the transport of goods by rail. And I believe that in this area we still have work to do. The forecast regarding the increase in the transport of goods in the coming years – which is good or bad depending on your point of view – is very significant. This increase will be the result of increased development and growth in our countries and, in a way, if it did not happen, it would be a bad indication with regard to the performance of our economy and therefore of our society as well.
To this end, we must improve the infrastructures. And above all the interoperability of our trains. As Mr Konrad has explained very effectively, when you arrive at a border in a goods train, it probably takes six or seven hours to cross the border. But this problem also has its equivalent in the field of air transport. If, for example, you travel by car and cross the border between Germany and France, nobody asks you to identify yourself nor to say whether you are crossing the country. However, if you travel by plane, you have to ask permission to cross from one side to the other and sometimes it is even granted when you are already in a third country because you have already crossed in the meantime."@en1
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