Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-03-07-Speech-1-135"
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"en.20050307.14.1-135"2
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"Mr President, the Commission looks forward to the position Parliament will take on this dossier with confidence and I would like to thank the speakers who have all stressed the excellent work Parliament has done and paid tribute to the rapporteur, Mr Schmitt. I do in fact believe this report is a very encouraging report and, once again, I want to add my voice to the praise and thanks that have been addressed to the rapporteur of the Committee on Transport and Tourism.
There we are, ladies and gentlemen, the Commission is in broad agreement with your work. The Commission is genuinely able to give its full support to Mr Schmitt’s report and I would like to add that the Commission’s and Parliament’s positions are really very close. The constructive nature of Mr Schmitt’s report really must be emphasised and, as I believe Mr Rack said just now, while the initial proposal was a good one, the text is even better. Yes, it is true, the text is even better, proving once again the importance of Parliament’s work as co-legislator.
If you validate this approach in tomorrow’s vote, I therefore believe we will have made progress towards achieving the objectives we have all set ourselves: that is, seeking even greater safety in the field of air traffic control. That is what Europe’s citizens are expecting of us, and it is all the more necessary if we want air traffic to develop in the direction of a very high service quality, with, in particular, a level of safety that should make the European sky probably the safest sky in the world.
I now have to speak on the amendments. I am not going to review them individually, Mr President. With your permission, I would prefer to take them in groups. Most of the amendments seek to clarify the text of the proposal for a directive and to highlight safety, because safety really is this text’s absolute priority, or to introduce continuation training in the realm of safety. Such is the case with Amendments 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13 and 15. The Commission is therefore able to accept all these amendments. The same goes for Amendment 16, which tightens the conditions for the introduction of national endorsements, and for Amendment 18, which seeks to simplify administrative burdens.
The Commission will be able to back your position on the language rules, which in a balanced way reconciles legitimate safety concerns and the rights of free movement of controllers; your Amendments 10 and 17 bring about genuine convergence between the positions of Parliament and the Council.
A number of other amendments are acceptable in principle provided their wording is amended slightly. The Commission fully supports the principle of Amendment 6 concerning monitoring by the social partners and involving and consulting them. I have already stressed this point in my first speech. So far as Amendment 14 is concerned, the Commission accepts the idea of greater training in safety, but believes it would be better to deal with this in Annex I, which specifies the content of training.
Then there is the amendment that introduces the reference to the law of the place of work in the case of mobility. I fully understand the logic behind Amendment 20. The legal basis for such a proposal is nevertheless safety, and that objective is pursued through the establishment of standards for the essential conditions in the matter. As Mr Savary has pointed out, there is already Community law on this subject. The Worker Secondment Directive does in fact provide that the conditions of the place of work shall apply in the case of secondment. That is why, instead of an article that is alien to the purpose of the text, the Commission would be willing to accept a recital making explicit reference to relevant Community law, as you have asked for.
As I have just said, to confirm the importance of involving the social partners in implementing and monitoring this directive, especially in support of Amendment 6, I propose that such a reference to the social law applicable be included in a recital. In other words, this text, which is essentially about safety, is located in the context of a Community social law that can well be referred to in the recitals.
That leaves us with three amendments that the Commission is not able to support, for formal reasons in particular. Firstly, the Commission believes it is unnecessary to retain the requirement for accounts complying with international standards, as Amendment 19 asks for. The providers of continuation training, that is the suppliers of air traffic control services, are already covered by other Community regulations, and such a requirement seems to us to be excessive for small training providers. The Commission is therefore able to agree to a complete deletion of the paragraph concerned, your concern for sound management already being covered by other sources of Community law.
On Amendment 21 on the structure of penalties, the Commission prefers to keep the standard formula as it also appears in the general approach adopted by the Council. There is also Amendment 4, which touches on a very important aspect of the introduction of a licence: what should be done with holders of national licences? In our view, the solution is not to defer the introduction of the new harmonised standards or to have two parallel standards of competence existing side by side. Quite honestly, that would not be good for safety. That is why the Commission is unable to back this proposed amendment. Having said that, it is open to any solution that is conducive to the rapid introduction of the standards of competence, while of course respecting the obligations of legal certainty for current licence holders.
Amendment 22 was tabled just before the plenary session. As I mentioned earlier, the Commission supports the consultation and involvement of the social partners; they are essential. To be more precise, however, it does not believe it is essential for such an obligation to appear in this text."@en1
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