Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-08-Speech-3-139"
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"en.20031008.12.3-139"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to thank the rapporteur, Mr Rack, and the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism, for wholeheartedly embracing this highly technical proposal and for then managing it in a pragmatic and constructive way.
I am pleased to note, first of all, that there is a broad degree of consensus between Parliament, the Commission and the Council on the measures to be adopted. Differences of opinion, where they occur, only relate to aspects that are relatively minor in comparison with the aims that are being pursued here and which are: to achieve, within a decade, a substantial improvement in the level of protection provided for users of major trans-European road network tunnels.
With regard to Mr Rack’s report, I should like, Mr President and Mr Rack, not to go through the 78 amendments one by one, but to divide them into groups. Parliament has been given a set of highly technical amendments which are intended, if I am not mistaken, to bring the Commission’s proposal more into line with the text that has resulted from the work of the Council, which has itself held many meetings with experts on this issue. In principle, the Commission has no major objection to these amendments because we feel we have endeavoured to prevent the Council from deviating from the proposal’s original intentions.
The Commission also wishes to highlight several amendments that pay specific attention to persons with disabilities, to ensure that they are able to escape in the event of a fire. We are, in principle, in favour of the directive making specific reference to disabled people. The experts tell us that, in the event of major fires that cannot be put out, users have only a very short time
around ten minutes
in which to reach shelter. Unfortunately, therefore, persons in wheelchairs, who move more slowly, are at greater risk than able-bodied people. We believe that all of the directive’s provisions will lead to considerable improvements to the protection of the disabled.
Some amendments are intended to modify the terminology used in order to designate the various levels for which clarification of responsibilities is sought. The Commission does not wish to accept these amendments, because moving away from terminology which now appears to be almost universally accepted would not help us to achieve our goal of clarification. Some amendments relate to aspects not covered by the directive but which are important for tunnel safety or for implementing measures. I am thinking in particular of the amendments relating to driver training or to the financing of tunnel repairs. Although these are only simple recitals, they fall outside the scope of the directive and we do not feel able to accept them.
In fact, when you add them up, the Commission can accept totally or in principle 52 amendments; it can accept one other in part and there are 25 amendments that it cannot accept. These somewhat stark figures are not an accurate reflection of the real situation, which is that between the Commission and Parliament, and I think I can say between Parliament and the Council, there is greater agreement than the figures suggest on the essential aspects of the dossier.
I therefore wish to express the hope that the three institutions manage to take a decision so that the directive can be adopted rapidly. As I said, the engineers face a long haul in order to bring the tunnels into line with the provisions of the directive and this work must be begun as soon as possible."@en1
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