Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-15-Speech-1-083"
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"en.20000515.5.1-083"2
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"Mr President, I must, and can, be brief. This week we are able, for the first time, to adopt a European Union legislative act which has been drawn up on the initiative of the European Parliament and on which, thank God, the Commission and the Council have cooperated positively. It is about improved protection for accident victims in the European Union. This directive resolves a large number of the problems which usually arise when people are involved in an accident in another country.
First of all, however, and before looking back, I wish to take a look into the future. Commissioner Bolkestein, a draft fifth directive already exists. I have drawn it up and it will soon be put before Parliament. I very much hope that we will also be able to cooperate closely on this issue. The fifth directive is therefore already in the pipeline. At the beginning of June – this is also part of our glance into the future – we will be holding a conference at the Academy of European Law in Trier on another important issue, the reform of personal injury, and this may give rise to a further parliamentary initiative. As you can see, we wish this debate on improved protection for accident victims to gain a certain momentum. I would be very grateful to you in particular, Commissioner, if we could achieve this together.
I would be grateful to you because you made an important contribution – and this is where I start to look back – to the debate on the fourth directive. You see there was the major problem of deciding whether this directive ought to apply when the accident had taken place in a Member State of the European Union. I have never understood why the Commission initially fought against this so stubbornly; its stance could not be justified from a logical, political or legal point of view. Then, thankfully, when we discussed this in Parliament at the end of last year, you prepared the ground for us to make this possible. This directive will now apply in all countries which are members of the green card system, meaning that approximately 90% of all accidents in which Europeans might be involved will be covered. And while I am on the subject of figures, we are talking about approximately 500 000 accidents a year in the European Union alone – not counting third countries – where we will be able to settle claims much more easily in the future. In the past there was the problem that people had to cope with a foreign language, foreign laws and so on. Sometimes the process dragged on for ages. When I look at the petitions which have been sent to the European Parliament’s Committee on Petitions because claims arising from traffic accidents in another country have taken years and years to settle, I am quite sure that this directive constitutes a very decisive step forward.
Obviously, we cannot in any way change either the law which has to be applied or the legal jurisdiction, but by now proposing a system whereby each insurer has a claims representative in every other country, we will probably be able, as far as the accident victim is concerned, satisfactorily to settle the claims arising from 90% of all traffic accidents which take place in another country. That is a very big step forward.
When we debated this, some questions were still open. I did, and I would just mention this point, rather regret the fact that the compensation bodies – and these were, after all, the Commission’s idea – were gradually watered down during the political consultation process. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, we did find a solution which is satisfactory, but in three to four years’ time we will review what this directive has achieved and, if necessary, propose improvements.
In conclusion, I should like to say that thanks to your intervening, Commissioner, important progress has been made on this directive, and I should specifically like to thank you for that. You overcame resistance from within your own Commission. This was a great achievement and we thank you very much for it. I hope that, where the protection of accident victims and its improvement is concerned, we will also enjoy fruitful cooperation in the future."@en1
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