Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-11-Speech-3-255"
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"en.20040211.9.3-255"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, as is, unfortunately, too often the case in national politics, European politics is also suffering from the syndrome that in the case of environmental disasters, reactive action, instead of pro-active action, is taken all too often when working out adequate measures. Accordingly, the disaster involving the oil tanker
was needed in order to set up a European Maritime Safety Agency. Not even a year after this Regulation was adopted, France was faced with the disaster involving the oil tanker
. That is why a proposal is now being tabled in order to change this Regulation and to remove its loopholes.
Although we can only applaud a well-functioning Agency of this kind, I should like to raise a few objections. First of all, I welcome the fact that the Agency will have the wherewithal to fight pollution, at the request of a Member State, by means of special ships. This environmental aspect receives my group’s unconditional support.
Secondly, we also back the proposal to give the Agency a role involving certificates of competency of seafarers, provided that the high quality of current training courses remains guaranteed.
I should like to make a comment with regard to the third point. It should not be this Agency, but it should remain the competent port authorities themselves, who are responsible for taking safety measures against terrorist threats. In this connection, I, as an inhabitant of Antwerp, can state that the port of Antwerp has, in this area among others, made huge efforts in order to bring the safety of its infrastructure into line with the regulations of the relevant American customs authorities. As we did a few months ago with self-handling, we must oppose the Commission’s urge to introduce one centralistic model for all ports in Europe, and we remain in favour of the age-old Hanseatic model that has guaranteed prosperity, expansion, employment and the safety of our northern European ports."@en1
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