Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-31-Speech-3-289"
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"en.20040331.14.3-289"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like firstly to thank Mrs Maes for the wonderful work she has done throughout this time, as rapporteur on a Directive which was originally presented in 1997, but which was blocked as a result of the differences between the United Kingdom and Spain with regard to the issue of Gibraltar.
I would like to reply to Mrs Maes by saying that, before the end of this Commission’s term of office, before relinquishing my duties, I hope to have presented the modification which clarifies the companies with which charter flights are carried out and, possibly, any change which may provide guarantees and rights for customers.
I would like to thank the honourable Members and the Council for the work they have done, and I hope that tomorrow you can support the result of this conciliation, the application of which, I will insist, is extremely urgent, not only an informal application as is the case at the moment, since it is already being applied, but in a full sense so that it may have full effect.
Mrs Maes, the United Nations has stated very clearly that Gibraltar is a colony. It is rather shocking that in Europe, in European territory, we still have a colony, but the United Nations says it, no less. Anyway, I mean to say that we must understand the problems which are hidden behind other problems we are faced with on occasions.
Thanks not to the problem of September 2001, however, but rather to the United Kingdom and Spain once again putting this issue to one side and accepting a formula which does not prejudge anything, either in favour of one country or the other – it simply leaves the dispute between the two countries frozen, despite the progress made within the European Union and the other countries, including those two – we were able to unblock this issue.
This is an issue which affects not just this proposal, but a whole series of other proposals relating to the air sector. When I arrived I found that there were nine or ten, then the whole of the ‘Single Sky’, but in the end, in 2000 we managed to unblock everything and we have been able to bring it forward.
In fact, on 3 January this issue arose once again in an extremely brutal manner, following the Flash Airlines tragedy which led to numerous deaths.
Once again, we realised that we should act more quickly. But, finally, we have done so. At that point we were in the conciliation process, we had made a lot of progress, and unquestionably what it did was facilitate the conciliation and I would like to thank the European Parliament's delegation to the Conciliation Committee as well as the Council for the work they have done and which has allowed us, I believe, to achieve a good conciliation.
This conciliation will provide inspectors, national authorities and the Commission with the resources needed to identify foreign transporters who do not respect international safety rules and deny them access to Community airports if necessary, as well as overflying of European airspace.
I would like to say that, before being approved, this Directive is already having an effect. Specifically, a few weeks ago, one of the countries of the European Union, within the framework of the SAFA programme, which now exists within the context of the ECAC, detected serious deficiencies in a third country airline and has denied it access to its airports.
Well, this measure has been communicated to us, to the Agency, to the Commission, and we have also communicated it to the countries of the Union and a further four countries have followed that country in its decision to exclude this air company from its territories."@en1
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