Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-18-Speech-2-140"
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"en.20031118.6.2-140"2
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".
Mr President, Madam Vice-President, in the course of difficult negotiations, Parliament’s delegation has been able to persuade the Council to accept a large number of rules in the interests not only of existing port systems and of the port workers, but also of fair competition conditions in and between ports.
Even though there were some demands that we could not get the Council to accept, I therefore recommend that all Members of this House should accept the result of the conciliation procedure and express their satisfaction with what has been achieved. Considerations of legal certainty for ports, port operators, and port workers mean that the European Union needs its first basic directive on ports. Rejection of this compromise would leave unregulated for years matters of vital importance to European transport policy, such as market access within the ports and the conditions under which ports compete with each other, and would therefore open the door to distortions of competition among ports and uncontrollable duplications of their services.
Let me issue a warning to those Members of this House who advocate rejection: if that were to happen, the Commission would be entitled to examine the situation in each individual port. We would do better to lay down basic rules, so that everyone knows from the outset by what rules they must abide. In particular, Parliament can count itself very fortunate that the Council has accepted its demand that the definition of self-handling should cover only the deployment of the shipping companies’ own seamen and not of its land-based staff as well. In that respect, Parliament has been able to give practical expression to the principal concerns of both the operators of ports and of the people who work in them.
In order to achieve a compromise, on the other hand, Parliament’s delegation had to abandon its demand for a general requirement for prior authorisation for port services. The Council wants to follow the subsidiarity principle and leave this in the competence of the Member States. Our side was nonetheless able to gain acceptance for the idea that the Member States should be able to ensure that the competent authority can insist on prior authorisation for the provision of port services, so this is still left to the Member States’ discretion. Finally, the Council accepted Parliament’s amendments on periods and conditions for authorisations and transitional arrangements, in which Parliament has ensured that interests in ownership are put on an equivalent footing to leasing arrangements. Parliament’s delegation has also achieved acceptance for the requirement that authorisations be amended or abrogated where the criteria for authorisation or for the social security regulations to apply are not complied with in substance. It must therefore be noted that we have taken up an unambiguous position on the social conditions of port workers, and have done a splendid job of it.
The Council also accepted that the Member States have to enact regulations whereby the newly-authorised service providers are obliged to make appropriate compensation payments to former service providers, but – and this is something with which we are not very satisfied – the Council wants this to be restricted to those instances in which the period of validity of their authorisations is reduced as a result of the new directive. One can see a certain logic in this. In all other cases, the legislation of the individual States is to be applicable.
One aspect of the overall compromise that Parliament was obliged to accept with some regret was that pilotage services remain within the scope of the directive. This was, however, made acceptable by the Council and Parliament’s joint and particular emphasis on the importance of pilotage services in terms of safety and the protection of the environment, and the fact that the competent authorities can, on grounds of public safety, continue to restrict pilotage to one single service provider. Parliament eventually managed to delete the limited duration of authorisation for pilotage services, for which the Council had provided.
I think Parliament broke new ground in managing to get the objectives of the directive extended by adding to them the creation of fair conditions of competition in and between ports. To this end, ports and the providers of port services are obliged to disclose to the Commission and to the Member States the financial relations between themselves and public undertakings. For its part, the Commission is required to draw the necessary conclusions from this with regard to removing distortions of competition, and it has already indicated its readiness to enact explicit directives concerning the degree to which public funding in ports is permissible.
I would like to note, by way of summary, that this outcome from the conciliation procedure is a great success for all of us in view of the wholly negative stance initially adopted by the Council. I would like, in particular, to thank the Italian presidency of the Council and the Vice-President for enabling us to take this problematic dossier to what I regard as a good conclusion.
Please permit me to make the following final observation. We are dealing here not only with single issues relating to ports. What is at stake here is ability of the EU’s ports to compete, being as they are crucially important as nodal points in the trans-European networks. We all share in the task of making these ports more efficient, and so I ask you to accept the outcome of the conciliation procedure and endorse it."@en1
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