Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-03-Speech-3-094"
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"en.20000503.6.3-094"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats supported Mr Sterckx’s report in the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism as it will support it in plenary. The key message, as Mr Sterckx has reiterated, is that basically liberalisation has succeeded in principle. As a result we now have substantially more competition. This stronger competition has also created some movement in price levels, not in all market areas, certainly, but in many of them. Furthermore, what many people feared has not come to pass, namely job losses and deteriorating working conditions, and instead we continue to see rising employment.
In the space of about eight years, employment figures have risen by nearly 50 000 and there really has been no evidence of a lasting decline in working conditions unless we look at this in the context of what has happened nationally, which is that national airlines are in a sense being transformed into modern service industries, which is, of course, accompanied by changes in working conditions and their modernisation.
Nonetheless I am glad that the report does address the fact that we, of course, expect common rules – even if for a different reason, namely because of safety aspects –with regard, for instance, to working hours and flight times, because, at the end of the day, it is training and actual working conditions that will partly determine how safe we can make European aviation over the long term.
Mr Sterckx also made it clear, however, that liberalisation concerns only a very small area of European air transport, which can largely be regarded as successful, but there are many other areas that currently continue to give us problems, whether these are old, unresolved problems or new ones. We are a long way from having a uniform, common European air transport market, in principle. I think in future we will have to deal with four important points. Mr Sterckx has already addressed some of them, and I would like to raise them again. In my view, the Member States’ airlines must, of course, be in a position to have equal access to the international market, like other airlines in the world. At the same time, we must ensure that the airline companies really do achieve economic stability, which means we have to try to ensure, through appropriate competition on the ground, that the immense costs of, for instance, landing and ground handling charges are reduced to the kind of level that is usual in other countries of the world.
Secondly, let me emphasise that we do want to see more air transport. It enhances individual mobility. But, on the other hand, we must not disregard environmental conditions. My position is fairly clear on this point. Bans are not the right method; instead we need incentives, we need to give support for the airlines to move towards reducing emissions by using modern fleets that use less kerosene and also produce less pollution.
Thirdly, in my view we need to improve consumer protection because obviously the growing number of passengers brings increasing problems with it and, in this regard, the passenger deserves more protection than the airline. My fourth and final point, and the one I consider most important, is that we must ensure that we also have a single European airspace and we must establish a uniform system of air traffic control in order to reduce delays and congestion."@en1
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