Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-02-22-Speech-2-205"
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"en.20050222.14.2-205"2
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".
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to start by thanking all those involved – not only the Commission and Parliament’s administration, but also my fellow Members. Over the past few months, work on the directive on driving licences has been marked by a desire to achieve coherence and to engage in extensive dialogue. The reason for this is that the varying opinions that have emerged on this issue have resulted from differences in outlook between the individual countries, rather than from party politics.
This is why we have adopted the step-up approach, but we do not intend to base this on theory tests. We have opted for training, and accordingly we intend to enable those Member States which prefer to set a younger minimum age to guarantee legal certainty in this respect for their citizens, but their systems would have to be graduated as prescribed in the draft directive. We do not wish to challenge the traditions of a number of countries in this domain, traditions rooted in factors such as mobility requirements and economic conditions, but we do wish to pursue a general strategy based on a European average age and a system of progressive training.
There are equivalence problems, and these will not go away. What we have done is to launch an initial attempt to cover three- and four-wheeled vehicles too, but we are also aware that the inherent problems cannot be resolved overnight. For my own part, I still believe that it would be ill-advised to cover cars and motorcycles with the same licence, because they require two very different sets of driving skills, even though it might be a means of improving mutual understanding between motorists and motorcyclists.
To sum up, then: simplification, legal certainty, road safety and the suppression of fraud are the main elements we sought to emphasise in our proposal. Finally, let me reiterate my thanks to all my fellow Members for their great goodwill and cooperation over the past few months.
This is why, Commissioner, I wish to thank the Commission for its clear advice, as well as everyone who has worked very hard on this subject.
While seeking consensus and coherence, we also considered it important that this whole instrument should be of public benefit, affecting as it does, after all, almost two thirds of the adult population of Europe. This is precisely why we chose to go a little further: instead of 111 driving licences plus a European model, the proposal tabled by the Committee on Transport and Tourism envisages a reduction to one single European driving licence within a reasonable time frame of about ten or twenty years.
This naturally has a certain symbolic value, but it also offers the advantage of simplifying roadside checks; simplified checks, of course, are consistent with the fight against crime and fraud – and we are all familiar with the problem of licence tourism in Europe; the Internet is full of pages devoted to it, which is why this is a matter for the Member States too. The point is that, if we have a single driving licence and can therefore simplify and centralise data in the Member States, and if the latter are also willing to cooperate in exchanging these data, this will surely go some way towards curbing fraud and improving mobility in Europe.
The public also gain added value from legal certainty. Far from wishing to encroach upon acquired rights, we seek to reinforce them. We also want to ensure that those who drive for a living do not lose their rights when they move home, for example, as we have seen from some of the complaints lodged with the Commission. The proposal would also benefit people who travel from one country to another as tourists and who would like their rights to be recognised wherever they go.
We have also opted to refrain from any age discrimination and have therefore left it up to the Member States to introduce medical or other purely preventive tests as they see fit. I firmly believe, however, that the rules already established in several countries will spread to others.
Another benefit is increased road safety; in this respect, the draft directive follows the Commission line in its reliance on basic training. Basic training is the fundamental element, but it does not interfere in any way with systems of advanced training. In this respect we have sought consistency with the Directive on the initial qualification and periodic training of drivers of certain road vehicles for the carriage of goods or passengers, be it for bus drivers or for HGV drivers.
Another example is our solution to the problem of campers and caravans, which lies in appropriate training rather than the introduction of a complex B+E licence; in this way, we take due account of tourism, which plays an important part, as we all know, in the development of the European economy.
A step-up approach with regard to motorcyclists is also a feature of the underlying philosophy, and in your introduction, Mr Vice-President, you referred to the universally recognised fact that more efforts can and must be made in this direction. There are still more than 40 000 deaths on our roads, and while the number of deaths in car accidents is falling, the same cannot be said, regrettably, for motorcycle accidents, which continue to claim an alarmingly high number of lives."@en1
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