Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-22-Speech-1-055"
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"en.20030922.5.1-055"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, today finds us again devoting our attention to analysing the causes of the wreck of the
and its grave and far-reaching consequences. This detailed report by Mr Sterckx, to whom many thanks for his excellent work, provides a first-rate basis on which to do this.
Both the rapporteur and the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism as a whole have attempted, with great care and thoroughness, to give sober and objective answers to the questions as to the causes and consequences of the disaster and the lessons to be derived from it. I lay such weight on that in view of the past political campaign waged by many Members of this House with the objective of getting Parliament to set up a committee of inquiry. I am able to say today that, despite all the differences of political opinion in the committee, our real and overriding concern was to bring the facts to light and, above all, to come to the conclusions that are needed if we are to avoid such a disaster repeating itself. It was quite remarkable how the Spanish officials, when they appeared before the committee, appeared to misread how things stood in this House and to believe that they did not need to cooperate actively with us in our work. This attitude had changed by the time of the on-the-spot visit in Galicia.
The rapporteur nonetheless – and I quote from his explanatory statement – comes to the conclusion that ‘a number of fundamental points remain to be clarified or are the subject of contradictory testimony’. He also points out that various investigations into the precise cause of the disaster, and into the question of who was responsible for it, are still in progress. These observations were made in mid-June, when the report was being completed.
In the meantime, several months have elapsed, and new details have become public knowledge, including the fact that the Spanish and the French consulted each other on what was to be done with the stricken vessel; the contradictions in the statements by the Spanish authorities about the quantity of oil disgorged by the wreck and the original quantity of oil that the tanker was carrying; analyses of the effects of oil pollution on the environment and initial assessments of the social and economic consequences after the summer break. These confirm what we had feared about the provisional nature and consequent inevitable incompleteness of the Sterckx report’s recommendations and conclusions.
It was for this reason that my group decided to demand that the results of the inquiry be updated, and joined with the other groups in tabling the motion for the setting up of a temporary committee in this House, although we knew full well that there is little time available for this. This House’s political responsibility demands that, if we are to come to the right conclusions for the future, we must do so with the greatest possible clarity and in full knowledge of the causes, and this can only happen if we act on a joint basis, with close cooperation at national and European level."@en1
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