Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-14-Speech-3-269"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20051214.18.3-269"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, before turning to the Machinery Directive itself, I should like to start by extending very warm thanks to all those involved in this process, and especially to the shadow rapporteurs of the various other groups. They were prepared to make many compromises, and I am particularly grateful to them for that fact. I should also like to thank the Commissioner responsible, who is present in the Chamber today, for his willingness to compromise on many points of detail that were of crucial significance for Parliament. This will make it a great deal easier for Members to vote in favour of a slightly amended version of the Common Position.
I should like to address five issues that we regard as being of paramount importance. The directive – which, it must be admitted in a spirit of self-criticism, is not immediately comprehensible to the general public – was aimed at establishing a clearer distinction between this and other directives. One problem has arisen in this regard, however, namely the Tractor Directive. Whereas tractors did not previously fall under the scope of the Machinery Directive as well as that of the Tractor Directive, they are now covered by both. This is a heavy double burden to impose on manufacturers, and one that we would have liked to avoid. The Tractor Seats Directive is of course a further issue, and Mr Verheugen cannot have failed to notice the reports in German newspapers claiming that this Directive is regarded, both in Germany and elsewhere, as nothing less than a bureaucratic monstrosity. It is for this reason that I am extremely grateful to him for working together with us towards our goal, even though the work is perhaps not progressing quite as quickly as we might all have liked. This goal is to achieve a solution whereby machinery falls under the scope of only one directive, or in other words whereby the Tractor Directive applies only to tractors, and the Machinery Directive applies to all other types of machinery.
Our task now is to ensure that we achieve this goal as soon as possible. My wish would of course be for the revision of the Tractor Directive, and the incorporation of all the risks not yet addressed, to be completed within the 18 months that the Member States will need to implement the Machinery Directive. I am aware that such wishes cannot always be granted immediately, but I should like to set a goal of 18 months, which would take us up to the deadline for implementation.
It goes without saying that I would have liked to make more headway on certain issues in my capacity as rapporteur. An example of one such issue is the granting of exemptions for harmless types of machinery such as wristwatches. In the end, however, I withdrew my amendment to this effect in response to the serious concerns, most of which were voiced by the Commission, over the safety loopholes that could arise as a result.
At the same time, however, Parliament has made a considerable step forward from the original Common Position as far as the confidentiality of trade secrets is concerned, and in my opinion the same also applies to the scrapping of machinery. We are of course all aware that sustainable production is crucially important for Europe
with a view to meeting the Lisbon goals, but there can be no question that we were right to avoid making manufacturers responsible across the board, as it were, for the scrapping of machinery, since it is genuinely impossible for them to know all the details of the scrapping process in advance. Furthermore, these manufacturers are often small and medium-sized enterprises. It is also my belief that we still have more work to do together on the matter of certification, and especially third-party certification, since the position outlined in the Common Position with regard to the CE marking was in no way acceptable for the Members of this House. Regardless of the number of meetings that were needed to draft this Common Position, in our opinion it is not enough for the Council to cater to the lowest common denominator, and to put forward formal compromises worded in such a way that it is hard for anyone to understand them, let alone a member of the public or an SME owner.
Needless to say, we too are aware of the difficulties faced in this respect, for example with regard to translation. In spite of this, however, our goal must be to draft legislative texts that the general public can understand, and indeed this is a cause that Mr Verheugen has made his own.
I am delighted that we have taken a small step forward on the issue of the CE marking. Although in my opinion we still need to do more, you did in fact make express reference to the ‘new approach’ to the CE marking in your 2006 work programme, so I do not want to spend too much time complaining about it now. I believe that the time has now come to take a broader and more coherent approach and to ensure that the regulations governing the use of the CE marking are the same in all sectors. Not only would this be advantageous in itself, but in my opinion it would also fall under the heading of better regulation. Nevertheless, when drafting this legislation we must once again give serious thought to the role of the CE marking in the European Union, to the quality and safety standards that we associate with it and to the bodies that are responsible for monitoring these standards. The reason I say this is because I believe that we still have work ahead of us in the Member States in terms of explaining and debating the issue of market surveillance. It must not be the case that the European Union is made responsible for any problems that arise, even when the Member States have shirked their duties with regard to the time spent on surveillance.
All in all, I should like to reiterate my warm thanks. I believe that we have made a certain amount of progress in terms of achieving better regulation and reducing red tape, but that much remains for us to do. In this connection, I am counting on the Commission to make good headway with new proposals, in particular on the subject of tractors, in order to bring us closer to our goal of better regulation."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples