Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-03-Speech-2-044"
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"en.20020903.2.2-044"2
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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would firstly like to thank the people responsible for the reports and all the speakers in this debate, which I have found extremely interesting.
Privatisation. I am rather tired of repeating the same thing. I do not know if there is a lack of knowledge or a lack of trust here. Read what the text says rather than the pamphlets of certain trade unions. There is no privatisation here. Air traffic control is a natural monopoly which must be regulated. There is a Court of Justice judgement which clearly establishes that this control is outside the competition rules. It is also laid down in the Treaties that the specific carrying out of that activity and the formula adopted for carrying it out should fall to each Member State. What we are not going to do is change the Treaty by means of a Directive. Ladies and gentlemen, we should keep in mind what our limitations are. Clearly it is a natural monopoly and clearly the Court of Justice has given its opinion and nobody intends to change the status quo. On the contrary, what we are proposing is to strengthen the situation of the public service and the common Community framework for this management of air traffic control.
Civil-military. This is the most thorny and delicate element of the whole debate. There is an extremely important report of the Legal Service of the Council, which firstly confirms the suitability of the legal basis on which the Commission’s proposal is based; therefore, if any of the honourable Members have any doubt, read the report of the Legal Service of the Council which, as you well know, goes into great detail on this.
Secondly, we are looking into how we can overcome the difficulties resulting from the simple fact that the Union has limited competences; on the one hand, we cannot go beyond the competences attributed to us, and on the other, in no way is it our intention to reduce the defence capacity of any country of the European Union or to get into areas of sovereignty beyond what is laid down in the Treaties. I would therefore like Members to be aware that all of this will be carefully safeguarded and that, furthermore, the Council’s report provides a basis for clearly resolving this problem.
In this context, the question is raised of supra-territorial blocks. I would say to the honourable Members that they should look carefully at this, that there are only cross-border blocks insofar as there is an agreement between the two States of the Union. It is true that they do not exist in the event that there is divergence. In this case there is no shared block, each country controls its territorial area and that is that. I therefore believe that this premise will allow us to overcome this difficulty.
Thank you very much, Mr President, I would like once again to thank Mr Fava, Mrs Sanders-ten Holte and Mrs Maes for the magnificent work they have done on this air package which will increase safety and rationalise the air sector in the European Union.
I would like to thank Mrs Maes for her report on the control of third-country aircraft, which has received the practically unanimous support of this House, and which will lead to an increase in general safety in the European Union, safeguarding not only the situation of the aircraft of the Union but also of those of third countries, especially those of the closest countries, of Eastern Europe, which are the ones we have the closest relations with.
In relation to the other reports, by Mr Fava and Mrs Sanders-ten Holte, on the Single Sky, I would like to conclude by making a few comments:
Firstly, the ‘Single Sky’ proposal is clearly not going to put an end to all delays. But 50% of delays in the air sector are the result of problems in air traffic management, and the ‘Single Sky’ proposal is clearly going to improve the management of air traffic and is therefore going to improve on that 50% of delays.
Secondly, the intention is simply the rationalisation of airspace, harmonising rules, harmonising systems, introducing interoperability and simply creating a network – since these days everything is on a network – of air control systems in all the countries of the Union. In that way we will put an end to a compartmentalised and fragmented system, which, far from increasing safety, actually reduces it. The creation of a network, the integration of systems and offering industry greater possibilities to make technological progress will contribute to an increase in safety.
I do not want to indulge in demagoguery or take advantage of tragedies, but I would like to say one thing to you: in the case of the terrible accident that took place this summer, the German air traffic controllers realised what was going to happen, but they were not on the network, nor were they integrated with the Swiss air traffic controllers, and they had to resort to a telephone to call Swiss air traffic control and could not connect. I cannot guarantee that with the Single Sky in operation this accident would have been prevented. We do not know. What I can assure you of is that it would have been easier to prevent it. And that is what we have to bear in mind. We are not just introducing greater rationality but also greater safety, and that is the objective of this initiative.
After 2004, we must maintain that objective and – to take up what was said by Mr Jarzembowski, Mr Ripoll and certain other speakers – we must demand a rapid solution from the Council. I trust in the Danish Presidency to provide impetus for this issue, which I know is one of the priorities in the field of transport and in particular air transport.
Eurocontrol. Ladies and gentlemen, nobody intends either to duplicate the actions of Eurocontrol or to cancel it out. But we must be aware that Eurocontrol does not have the capacities offered by the Community method to carry out its activities. I would like you to be aware that all Eurocontrol does is coordinate flights
. When it comes to operation, when aircraft are under way, the air control operation for these flights falls to the corresponding national authorities on the basis of a generic coordination which has been carried out previously by Eurocontrol.
What we are saying is that in real time, during the actual flight, there should be this integration and harmonisation of systems which increases control. Therefore, what we are doing is increasing safety and not taking competences away from an existing body. Because that body, I insist, does not have those capacities, it does not have the Community method which means that what we agree here (Commission, Council and Parliament) becomes an obligatory rule with which the courts can demand compliance on the part of all the countries of the Union."@en1
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