Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-01-16-Speech-3-241"
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"en.20020116.16.3-241"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, every day we read newspaper reports of major accidents on Europe's roads, caused by lorries with over-fatigued, over-worked and inexperienced drivers. Who among us does not shake his head and wonder how such a thing is possible on our roads at the beginning of the 21st century? The quality standard for road transport in the EU can and must be increased – there is no doubt about that. The driving profession, with the ever-increasing demands made upon it, must be built up and made more appealing. The safety of road transport must also be improved. It remains to be seen whether the option that the Commission is proposing here will indeed improve the situation. In my view, the directive before us will achieve no decisive added value.
Training is inherently to be welcomed and is advantageous to the profession, but the driving test means that every driver, even today, has to demonstrate more than just a comprehensive knowledge of the Highway Code. ‘Swept twice keeps cleaner longer’, they say back where I come from, but there is no clear and compelling logic to the way the Directive now – as I see it, unnecessarily – requires double the course content in many areas. Here is a crucial example. There is in Germany already a real training scheme for professional drivers, which takes three years, so, in comparison, the time required, referred to in the title of the Directive and, incidentally, reduced further by the Council, can only be described as basic vocational training. Nothing more can be achieved within a time limit of 140 hours.
I mentioned added value, yet, when I consider the details of the regulations under consideration, what I perceive at several points is more of a deterioration. An eighteen-year-old is now supposed to be allowed to drive a forty-ton lorry with a hazardous load across the Alpine passes – and that after only a few hours' basic training! That cannot be what the originator had in mind. We need the profession of driver to be enhanced; that is what the Directive is meant to do. There is, though, a need for improvement as regards safety on the roads. Perhaps everything would be much better, if we had, at long last, a new tachograph."@en1
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