Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-17-Speech-2-064"
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"en.20060117.6.2-064"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, first of all I would like to thank all the shadow rapporteurs and those who put forward motions on the European Commission’s report; as a result of this, in my view, we in the Committee on Transport and Tourism managed to achieve a good result. I think that we all had a common goal
to give those from the European Commission that are conducting talks both with Russia and with China something to work with and, of course, also to send a political signal to the Council for the giving of a mandate. In these terms too, in my view, we managed to formulate a very clear position on the most essential issues.
With regard to relations with China, taking into account the rapidly growing Chinese aviation market
in ten years’ time, for example, China will be the largest market in Asia for cargo flights
we had several principles in our work. Firstly, there needs to be swift progress in creating a comprehensive aviation agreement between the European Union and China. Secondly, the agreement would have to be based, of course, on a horizontal agreement. As Mr El Khadraoui, my colleague, just mentioned, we would very much like to see very rapid development on this foundation in relations with China. Thirdly, at the same time as preparing a comprehensive agreement we would like to see an extension of the mandate, so that it would also cover requirements for the safety infrastructure of airports and for the quality of China’s air traffic control. Fourthly, the report placed particular emphasis on the need to achieve a result without delay in the field of air cargo transportation that would allow European companies to compete sooner in the potentially largest Asian air cargo market.
With regard to Russia, the most important aspect is that the Transport Committee regarded as totally unacceptable the practice whereby each year Russia, in contravention of the Chicago Convention, of which Russia itself is a signatory, collects from European Union airlines more than EUR 250 million for overflights of Siberia. Most of this money is invested in the Russian airline Aeroflot, which thus makes over USD 100 million profit per annum and is enabled to retain approximately 38% of the air transportation market between the European Union and Russia.
I am pleased that my colleagues on the Transport Committee considered that the European Commission ought to be far tougher in talks with Russia, both within the framework of the World Trade Organisation and on projects for aviation modernisation. In our view, it is unacceptable for these payments to continue as they are and in a very non-transparent form until 2013. In addition, for many European airlines these payments create discriminatory obstacles when it comes to acquiring parts of the previously mentioned Chinese market. The expression in the draft motion for a resolution is even stronger
no other forms of payment to replace the Siberian overflight charges are acceptable to the European Parliament. We in the Transport Committee also considered that in talks between the European Union and Russia all European Union airlines must be given equal non-discriminatory legal status in order to enable them to acquire permanent take-off and landing rights at Russian airports.
Finally, may I say that we in the committee would like to see more information both about negotiations and about their status, which would thus give the European Parliament the opportunity better to defend the interests of Europeans
both airlines and passengers
in the sphere of other countries’ aviation markets."@en1
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