Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-27-Speech-2-286"
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"en.20050927.22.2-286"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, following the adoption of the first two railway packages in 2001 and 2004, the Commission proposed a further set of legislative measures on 3 March 2004, collectively known as the third railway package.
The second component of our third proposal is the possibility for international passengers to obtain information about the main destinations in Europe and to buy direct tickets. Thus, passengers can request one direct ticket when they have to cross the borders of several Member States. In particular, the Commission is asking for it to be made possible to purchase integrated tickets for destinations outside the network of the railway undertaking issuing the ticket. It should, for example, be possible to purchase a ticket to travel from Lyon, in France, to Graz, in Austria. In a letter recently sent to the Commission, a passenger complains of a local operator refusing to issue him with a ticket of this kind.
The third component of the proposal is a modern system of civil liability, comparable to that in other transport sectors and based on a system of compulsory insurance. The Commission believes that civil liability in the case of accidents should cover as many accidents as possible and that it should be accompanied by obligatory insurance, the only way to guarantee that proper compensation will be provided for all of the damages suffered by the passenger.
The final component is immediate assistance in the case of delays, including a compensation and indemnification system. Passengers holding tickets that are sometimes very expensive should not have to suffer prolonged delays or service cancellations without any information from the service provider or any support from the railway undertaking.
A final objective of the third railway package is to regulate freight services and to improve the quality of freight transport. Mr Zīle is the rapporteur for this fourth proposal. It seeks to have minimal clauses inserted into contracts between railway companies and their customers, something which is already deemed to be good practice in the sector. The precise content of the undertakings on quality is left to the contracting parties to determine. The proposed text seeks to have quality considerations taken into account systematically, as improving the quality of rail freight transport is essential if the sector is to maintain the momentum that it seems to be gathering.
In conclusion, I should like to address a key issue about the reading of the third railway package. As for previous legislative proposals in the railway sector, the notion of ‘package’ is very important for the Commission. It would be regrettable to endanger the success of the third package by unravelling it and separating its component parts. I would therefore like to stress our support for the position of the Committee on Transport and Tourism, which is recommending preserving the logic of the package. The Commission can also endorse the proposal made by your Transport Committee to coordinate the reading of the railway package with that of the new proposal for a regulation on public-service obligations. It is obviously desirable to ensure that the two proposals are mutually complementary, which pleads in favour of such a coordinated reading.
Ladies and gentlemen, I should like to thank your rapporteurs, who have examined our proposals so thoroughly. It goes without saying that I will be listening very carefully to what they, and all of the speakers, have to say during the course of this debate. I am convinced that this third railway package will enable us to achieve a genuinely better balanced use of the various modes of transport in Europe. We all know – and the explosion in oil prices is a reminder if we needed one – that we need to be able to identify alternatives, in particular for long-distance traffic: alternatives such as transport by rail, river and sea. The fact remains that rail transport needs to achieve its full potential in a Europe where it has the capacity, because it is changing, to become an extremely valuable trading and transport tool for all of the people of Europe.
That is why I attach a great deal of importance to this debate, Mr President, and I should like to thank Parliament in advance for its active participation, which I value so highly.
The objective of this third package is to supplement the regulatory framework for the railways at European level, so as to make progress on interoperability and to achieve greater integration of the market in passenger services, while at the same time safeguarding passenger rights. The measures also seek to improve the often poor standards of freight services.
These proposals are in line with the objectives set in the 2001 White Paper on transport policy. At that time, we had clearly stated that there was a need to modernise the way in which rail services were organised so as to stop them becoming any more unpopular and declining further, and to generate momentum for quality rail transport.
The legislative texts that we are examining today are also justified by the fact that transport services play a key role in the economic growth of our continent. The strategy launched in Lisbon recognised their significance in this respect.
I now turn, Mr President, to the measures that we are recommending in more detail: firstly, a proposal for a directive on the certification of train crews operating locomotives and trains. Mr Savary is the rapporteur. With your permission, I would recall simply that the Commission undertook to table this text during the negotiations between the European Parliament and the Council on the second railway package. Drafted in consultation with the sector and the social partners, this new text provides for a mechanism enabling competences and responsibilities to be better defined with regard to the training, assessment and recognition of the qualifications of train drivers and train crews with responsibility for safety. A driver will have to hold an individual licence attesting to his general abilities, which will be valid throughout the Community. This licence will have to be supplemented by a certificate issued by the railway undertaking employing him. This undertaking will give details of the training that he has received relating specifically to the line travelled, the rolling stock used and the operational and safety procedures followed. That is the first proposal for a directive.
The second proposal seeks to amend the current directive on opening up the market in rail transport. Mr Jarzembowski is the rapporteur. I would remind you that it concerns opening up the market in international passenger services to competition. This proposal is a direct response to a request made by Parliament to the Commission at the conciliation on the second railway package, when it expressed a desire to be consulted on specific proposals on opening up the market in passenger rail transport services.
Specifically, the Commission is proposing that, from 1 January 2010, those railway undertakings possessing a licence and the necessary safety certificate may operate international services throughout the Community. Facilitating new commercial initiatives will help to breathe new life into this sector. In order to create realistic economic conditions for the development of these services, the Commission believes that cabotage should also be permitted. The proposal therefore provides for the possibility of passengers being picked up and set down all along an international route, including between two stations in the same Member State, while at the same time safeguarding the balance of public-service contracts. I am particularly anxious that it should dovetail properly with the revised proposal for a regulation on public transport services that the Commission adopted in June 2005.
I turn now to the third part of the package: the proposal on passengers’ rights and obligations, which supplements the proposal to open up the market in passenger transport services. Before going into the details of this proposal, I would recall that hitherto the
on passenger protection has been limited to air transport. When it set out its objectives in the White Paper, the Commission wanted to put the user at the heart of all modes of transport. It therefore considered it necessary to extend the rights of rail passengers as a way of counterbalancing its policy of market opening.
The protection of rail passengers is a not insignificant instrument in our bid to relaunch and revitalise the rail sector. The report concerned is by Mr Sterckx. I will confine myself to mentioning a number of the proposal’s key points, starting with free and non-discriminatory assistance to passengers with reduced mobility, which will guarantee that trains are accessible. Passengers with reduced mobility have said that they would like transport services to be more easily accessible, so that they could use them without assistance. In cases when services are not sufficiently accessible, the railway undertaking and the station manager will be obliged to provide appropriate assistance if requested to do so."@en1
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