Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-05-13-Speech-1-045"
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would firstly like to thank Mrs Foster for her magnificent work and the professionalism she has shown throughout these months.
The aim of the rapporteur’s Amendment No 20 is to increase security. In this case the Commission believes that it would very much complicate things without really yielding concrete results and, for this reason, we must reject it.
The Commission generally rejects the amendments in the second package, which try to reduce security standards. I am talking about Amendments Nos 6, 13, 17, 27, 30 and 31 and in particular No 6 and No 13. The first is aimed at increasing the number of airports exempt from harmonised Community rules, by raising the threshold for the size of aircraft. Since the Commission has not been provided with any indication of the number of additional airports which would be exempt from the Regulation if this amendment were adopted, we reject it, since it introduces a legally unknown situation. We also reject Amendment No 13, which proposes delaying the entry into force of certain elements of the Regulation by twelve months, since all of the security rules in the Regulation are based on rules approved by the ECAC, which all the States of the Union belong to. We believe that its application should not be delayed even more, but that, on the contrary, it is urgent that the Regulation be applied as soon as possible, as Mr Jarzembowski said a moment ago.
The third group of amendments is aimed at extending the scope of the Regulation, which explicitly lays down the obligation for Member States to fund additional security measures and be responsible for them. The Commission is sympathetic to these arguments – I would like to make this very clear – and in particular Amendment No 7 on the equitable funding of additional security costs. But these amendments are not appropriate in this Regulation, and do not fall within the scope of Article 80 of the Treaty, which is its legal basis. Furthermore, in the event that it were possible to include rules on additional funding in this Regulation, those rules would not invalidate the superior Community rules on state aid which are still applicable.
Therefore, the Commission formally rejects Amendments Nos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11 and 12, although it is willing to examine the issues raised from a broader point of view, including the need for greater organisation in the field of the funding of investments in air security. If necessary, after carrying out a detailed study, the Commission is willing to present a legislative proposal, but in a separate form and not within this Regulation.
Finally, the Commission completely accepts all those amendments aimed at improving the Regulation from a grammatical point of view, while maintaining its content. Therefore, Amendments Nos 16, 19, 21 to 26, 28, 29, 32, 33 and 34 and Amendments Nos 14, 15 and 18 could be accepted after certain textual changes. The Commission and the European Parliament generally share a very similar position in this field. Both of us believe that good basic harmonised standards are necessary for security in civil aviation and that particular emphasis should be placed on this Regulation.
Once approved, the proposal will represent a very important step towards guaranteeing a high level of air security throughout the European Union. Parliament, and in particular Mrs Foster, through her magnificent work throughout the production of this report, is making a very significant contribution towards achieving this result. What we also need now is a cooperative attitude on the part of the Council and to finally achieve amongst all of us a compromise which allows us to move forward and which prevents the blocking of an issue which we must resolve as soon as possible.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, it is urgent that we apply harmonised rules as soon as possible in order to guarantee greater security in all airports and throughout the European civil air transport system.
As you all know, less than a month after the tragic events of 11 September the Commission proposed, through this initiative, to toughen the security requirements applicable to civil aviation in a harmonised manner and, when this proposal was sent to Parliament and the Council, it was considered urgent to reach an agreement in relation to it.
Parliament agreed with this urgency and therefore acted by focusing on the main provisions of the Regulation and left aside the technical annex which was based on the work of a specialised body, the ECAC (European Civil Aviation Conference) and particularly on its document No 30 on air security.
Now that the text has been analysed in more detail, the Commission understands that the Committee on Transport is proposing 33 amendments to the common position. Last week we attempted to reach a compromise on the issue between Parliament, the Council and the Commission and, as Mr Jarzembowski and Mrs Foster pointed out a moment ago, unfortunately that has not been achieved.
The Commission insists on the urgency of this document. If an interinstitutional dispute arises, I fear that we could find ourselves in a deadlock. I would therefore ask once again for a spirit of compromise, both on the part of the Council and on the part of Parliament, so that, before the summer, we can finally resolve this issue.
I would like to stress something that I have said on other occasions, and that is that the Commission will always carry out its work as a mediator, seeking agreements.
I would classify the amendments in four categories.
The first category, which is aimed at tightening the rules on air security, is the one containing the greatest number of amendments and we can accept practically all of them. Furthermore, Amendment No 8, which requests surprise airport inspections, is acceptable in principle. It proposes that airports should not be warned of inspections, but the Commission would like the inspection to be carried out with the knowledge and cooperation of the national regulatory authorities, as happens in the case of competition inspections or agriculture. That is to say, the national regulatory authorities would be informed but not the specific airports. We believe that that would provide the appropriate balance.
Amendment No 16, which has the Commission’s support, deserves a special mention. It deals with the requirement that all staff should be subject to controls on accessing security areas. The Commission agrees that air staff should be subject to the same controls as passengers and not to lower levels. We should remember that many terrorist incidents have resulted from a lack of security within airport installations."@en1
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