Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-06-13-Speech-3-166"
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"en.20010613.5.3-166"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I shall be reporting on the proposal for the Erika II package, the purpose of which is to create a European Maritime Safety Agency to provide the Commission with support in applying and monitoring compliance with measures and in assessing their effectiveness. As the Commission maintains, and we fully support its opinion, it is not possible, at least at this stage, to set up a single operational structure, a type of coastguard or European port authority, to take over the role of the national maritime administrations. On the contrary, the agency will have to support the actions of the Commission, or rather of both the Commission and the Member States, without the Commission's mediating, and this is the purpose of some of our amendments.
Of course, the Commission's proposal initially provoked several questions. Is it really necessary, in order to "supervise the supervisors", to create a new Community bureaucracy, or would it be possible to achieve the desired objective by stepping up cooperation between the national competent authorities and between these authorities and the Commission, or by reinforcing the Commission departments responsible? The new agency's dependence on the Commission also caused a problem initially because, despite its being described as independent in the explanatory statement of the report, a look at the proposed articles on the powers of the Administrative Board and the Executive Director and on the proposed composition of the board confirms that this independence is relatively limited. It is typical that, under the terms of the proposal, the Executive Director is to submit the work programme to the Board after having received the approval of the Commission and the Administrative Board then adopts the programme. Another typical element of dependence is that the Executive Director is appointed and dismissed by the Board, but only on a proposal from the Commission.
In other words, the European Commission seems to be distrustful of the agency in advance, even though the Commission itself proposes setting it up. This manifests itself in a tendency to act as a guardian and to restrict the guarantees of its independence, which is not seen in relation to corresponding Community bodies. A comparison with the status of similar bodies, such as the European Environment Agency or the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products leads us to the conclusion that these agencies have wider areas of competence and more scope for initiative. For example, there is no provision for the Commission to approve the work programme of the Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products, although similar arrangements apply to the Environment Agency. Nor is there any provision for the Commission to have the right to dismiss the executive directors of these agencies.
The question which emerges from all the above is: does the European Commission really want an independent agency or not? It is true that, in our committee, in the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism, the representative of the European Commission demonstrated a great deal of understanding for these views, which were supported by my colleagues across the board so that the ground has been laid for a compromise and the regulation under discussion can quickly be finalised.
I would also like to express the view that the representatives of related professional sectors who will sit on the Administrative Board of the agency should be elected by their colleagues, not the Commission, that it would he helpful if Parliament were represented on the Administrative Board, but not by MEPs of course, and that the agency's headquarters should be in a country and town with a shipping tradition and nautical infrastructure, so that it is close to as many maritime-related activities as possible, assuming of course that the town in question is able to provide all the other services needed in order for the agency to function and is well connected to the European centres. And if my fellow members interpret this as being Piraeus, then I am not to blame; forgive me, but Piraeus is to blame, with its impressive qualifications for the job.
I should like to close by thanking the Commission for acting so quickly, and to thank all my fellow members whose comments and ideas helped considerably in improving the report and, by extension, the regulation."@en1
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