Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-12-Speech-1-071"
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"en.20040112.6.1-071"2
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".
Thank you, Mr President. I would like to thank the honourable Members for their speeches and, firstly, I would like to thank Mrs Maes for the work she is doing as rapporteur on the safety of third-country aircraft.
I hope that we can have a conciliation quickly and that this accident will serve to make us speed up and overcome certain reservations and difficulties which arose in the Council in relation to the points which I referred to earlier, whether those relating to speedy transposition into national laws or those relating to greater transparency with regard to the stringency and quality of safety and the state of maintenance of the aircraft by the different air companies operating in the European Union.
I believe that there is a middle ground between Parliament’s initial proposal – which was perhaps too exhaustive – and not providing any information at all, and clearly the Commission supports, as I said in my first speech, an increase in transparency regarding the true situation of the aircraft of air companies, that is to say, stringency in the monitoring of safety standards.
As well as this issue, I would like to refer very briefly to the fact that there are certain issues which have yet to be promoted over the next few years, but the implementation of the European Civil Aviation Safety Agency is an extremely important step forward. When we adopt this legislation on third-country aircraft, we will be taking an extremely important step forward. Within the International Civil Aviation Organisation we must strengthen its controls, since, in principle, the control of how activities are carried out in the different States with regard to their aircraft falls to the International Civil Aviation Organisation. In other words, it would not be a question of the European Civil Aviation Agency going to a third country to check how they carry out their work and their controls there. This task falls to the International Civil Aviation Organisation. It is a different thing for the European Union to have competence to ensure that the aircraft which land in our territory comply with the requirements and that we control how the requirements are complied with by those aircraft. We must take an additional step forward, so that, at Community level, there are common rules, to the effect that if a country prohibits overflight or landing by certain aircraft, that that rule should be extended to the whole of the European Union’s airspace. That if a country detects a particular kind of problem in a specific aircraft, it will be obligatory for that information to be distributed and passed on to all the countries of the Union; and also that there be common rules on the way in which those controls are carried out, on the percentage and on the system. We must reach agreements which guarantee that the whole of the Union takes appropriate measures and that they are applicable throughout our airspace.
The next point which has arisen is the transfer of passenger data to the United States. I would like to clarify something which Mrs Ainardi has said, and that is that the United States are not requesting the sensitive information the honourable Member has mentioned. The information classed as sensitive in accordance with the Directive on data protection in Europe – health, religion and so on – is not being requested by the United States. This is what the honourable Member must be aware of. It is not that information which is going to be communicated.
The next issue relates to the communication of data. I can tell honourable Members that we have reached an agreement which the Commission believes provides for protection of the privacy of our citizens, because, as has been said before – I believe it was Mr Poignant – there is tension between the ‘safety’ component and the ‘privacy’ component. We must resolve the tension between the two elements in an appropriate and balanced way. We have reached an agreement – amongst other things, thanks to this Parliament, let us make this very clear – which in the end includes a series of guarantees which the European Union was demanding – a reduction in the amount of data, the type of data, a restriction in terms of the objective for which they will be used, a restriction of the time for which they can be used, in other words, all the elements which the honourable Members are perfectly aware of – which means that we can say that, by means of this agreement, the fundamental rights which our legislation affords our citizens are guaranteed, also in terms of the way the United States uses the information, while at the same time we are helping and cooperating in the improvement of safety in the air sector and the fight against international terrorism.
I believe that all of this responds essentially to the elements which have been raised here. I would like once again to thank this Parliament for its cooperation in the different steps we have taken. I believe they have been extremely important. We can bring them to a conclusion speedily through this Directive on the safety of third-country aircraft, and, ladies and gentlemen, I would like once again to express our condolences for the victims and say that we must continue to work to improve safety in the air sector, firstly, naturally, in European airspace, in relation to aircraft which leave Europe for other places, but also at world level, because, however much information we provide – and naturally we must do so, to increase transparency in the information tour operators give their clients, stating which company is going to provide the transport, stating exactly which companies they work with – this is important and will improve safeguards and information for our citizens and our passengers, and there can be no doubt that we – Europeans or non-Europeans – must fight to improve safety in air traffic and in international civil aviation."@en1
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