Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-02-22-Speech-2-217"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20050222.14.2-217"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I have already welcomed the Commission’s initiative and Mr Grosch’s report aiming at harmonising the rules regarding driving licences, and I welcome them again. We agree on the objectives of preventing licence fraud and above all of implementing a measure that will facilitate free movement for the citizens of the Union and contribute to improved road safety.
Nowadays, it is very easy for Europeans to move around and to share Europe’s roads. It is no longer acceptable to conceive of Europeans who have been granted their driving licences under different rules, having fulfilled very different requirements, driving on the same roads. This is a classic case where the principle of subsidiarity is substantially inapplicable. I am referring in particular to the roads in my country, Italy, throughout the summer.
We cannot have rules that are applied in different ways just because they apply to different individuals and contexts. The Europe of motorists and of road haulage is today one of the most successfully integrated aspects of Europe, and it requires harmonised, if not uniform measures.
In relation to road safety and the target that the Union has set itself of halving the number of road accident deaths by 2010, if the driving licence issuing and renewal system were to contribute even just minimally to improving people’s driving knowledge and skills and to keeping a check on drivers’ mental and physical conditions, if it were even to make the tiniest contribution to improving road safety in Europe, it would definitely be welcome.
It is for that reason – and certainly not for love of pointless red tape – that we should emphasise and support the idea of making the new licences subject to regular renewal and calling for existing ones to be gradually replaced as well; it is for that reason that we should agree on the idea of combining compulsory training with equally compulsory testing to ensure that driving skills are acquired and maintained; and it is for that reason that we should agree on the idea of making the issuing and renewal of licences subject to checks that potential drivers meet minimum standards of mental and physical health.
While common sense demands that we should be moving towards uniform rules in all such areas, one area where differences could possibly be allowed on the basis of subsidiarity might be motorcycle licences, which are issued in varying numbers in the various countries of the Union. In that respect, I believe it should be noted that in some countries people are allowed access to small motorcycles at a younger age than in others. That factor helps to improve people’s mobility in historic city centres and may favour the development of a system of progressive access to increasingly powerful motorcycles, which is one of the most valuable aspects of the directive in question.
That is why I think that we could also let category B licences be equivalent to category AM licences, so that car drivers could always ride motorcycles as well in major historic city centres."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples