Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-27-Speech-2-290"
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"en.20050927.22.2-290"2
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".
Mr President, I think that I too have been given an extra minute and a half by a fellow Member who cannot be here this evening, so I think that my speaking time has been extended to six and a half minutes, which I intend to use now if you would deduct these past ten seconds from it.
There is an enormous legacy from the past, shall I say, resting on the shoulders of the railway undertakings, but they must slowly but surely be encouraged to make improvements. A complaints service must be set up, but we should not go overboard with regard to the
used. I have simplified the proposal in terms of consequential damage, which I deleted. I believe that annual quality reports are unnecessary. We must achieve a more flexible system that allows room for initiative, for a broader application, for commercial initiatives of railway undertakings that are prepared to submit those, and for regional initiatives. Undertakings can therefore go beyond what we require, but – and that is, to my mind, essential in our position as Parliament – we think that those rights should apply to all passengers; not just to the elite of 5% that travels internationally, but to anyone using the train. That is the case in aviation, and there is no reason why that could not be the case in train travel. We are about to discuss this with the Council, but as far as I know, if my sources are reliable, this very issue, namely making the rights apply to all passengers, is a sticking point in the Council. I would like to say to the representative of the Council that this is one of the points that I as rapporteur will fight tooth and nail and I hope that I can count on the combined support of my fellow Members of this House.
On a final note, I would like to say to the Council, as did the two previous speakers, that this is a package. I urge you not to take it apart. I invite you to treat it as you wish, but return it as a package and accompany it with common positions that we will be able to hammer out together at second reading. This is a cohesive whole; I would press you to keep it that way.
Commissioner, I should like to thank the Commission for its proposal, for I regard all those railway packages, like the passengers’ rights proposal, as being an important element of the EU’s transport policy. If we want to establish an open European railway market, it is vital that the passengers should have minimum rights within that market if people are to gain, or retain, confidence in rail.
I have to tell you, though, Commissioner, that Parliament, or at least the Committee on Transport and Tourism, has made some amendments to your proposal. While I am on the subject, I would like to thank all Members who have taken part in the debate, either as individuals or as groups, for all the amendments they have tabled –of which there were quite a few, with perhaps more to come as well – but it is thanks to those efforts, Commissioner, that we are now presenting a proposal that, to my mind, is even-handed and well-structured.
There is a link between the area of application and the level of requirements. The Commission has opted for a small area of application, namely international rail traffic, and a strict package of requirements, while Parliament has slightly altered this balance, in that it opted for a large area of application, that is to say rights for all rail passengers, as is the case in aviation in fact, and has adapted the strict basic requirements to allow more room for manoeuvre for railway undertakings, regional authorities or local authorities.
I would first like to say a few words about the requirements package. We remained faithful to the international agreements of the Convention concerning International Carriage by Rail (COTIF) as much as we could and made, with regard to information to travellers, some changes to the Commission proposal accordingly. I take the view that it is not necessary to provide all information to all travellers both prior to, and during, the journey. That would, in fact, lead to an unworkable level of red tape, involving, for example, A4-size tickets. There is no point in doing this, I do not think. I think that railway undertakings need to be encouraged to give the necessary information to the right passengers. I do not think it is right to force companies to provide information about the competition or other companies if that is against their wishes. If they can be prompted to join forces, so much the better, but I think that a company that wants to win over a customer cannot be forced to include possible competitors in its information policy.
The same applies to tickets, except that in this case, a distinction needs to be drawn – and we make this quite clear – between a public service, where tickets have to be made available to a wide public, and commercial, specialist services, where, to my mind, far fewer resources can be used, such as the Internet only, which has happened in some cases, and which could bring the cost down. I also think that you cannot force competing companies to sell each other’s tickets. That is not done in aviation, so why should it be done in rail traffic? I do think, though – and we have tabled amendments to that effect – that we must give railway undertakings that wish to join forces every encouragement we can, and we must ensure that, for example, they set up a joint reservation system, such as is already in place for a number of airline companies.
In the event of accidents, death or injury of passengers, we believe that with regard to no-fault liability, in other words, in those cases where the railway undertaking are required to pay in any event, the same amounts must be used as those in the aviation regulation. As for luggage, we have adopted COTIF, because it contains a broader definition of luggage and also lists other amounts, but we felt that this was the best way of addressing this issue.
I would now like to turn to the subject of compensation for delays and cancellations, in respect of which we proposed a simpler system. The Commission has made things rather complicated, but if we are to extend the scope to include all passengers, we think we should have a simpler system for compensation, and at the same time a system not only for compensation pertaining to delays that exceed one hour, but also for people who face delays on a regular basis, so that they too could obtain compensation. People with season tickets would otherwise not qualify, and we do not regard that as acceptable.
One difficult chapter that attracted amendments by a very large number of Members was the chapter on people with reduced mobility. For people with impaired vision, hearing or a disability, we think that railway undertakings have a duty to pull out all the stops and observe a number of obligations. We have defined those in considerable detail, and we have more or less followed the Commission’s lead in this. In the event of prior warning, a commitment has been entered into and the railway undertaking has no choice but to help the passenger. If the passenger has not given prior warning and turns up without notice, then I think that the railway undertaking must do everything in its power to help those people. In fact, I think that most railway undertakings, most railway staff, see it as a matter of honour to help those people out. This is a case of us laying something down in law which is, in my view, a minimum requirement. I think that whilst we should encourage the railway undertakings to do everything they can for the people who have more difficulty in finding their way round in a railway station, and whilst we should expect much of them, we cannot expect everything. You cannot ask railway undertakings to do the impossible; what you can do is urge them, whenever there is a renovation, a structural alteration, or a new purchase, to ensure that the new materials and the new buildings satisfy today’s needs."@en1
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