Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-04-Speech-1-114"
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"en.20060904.19.1-114"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, the European Maritime Safety Agency is ready to take part in the fight against the marine pollution caused by the thousands of ships that plough through Community waters on a daily basis, but we must first acknowledge that the Member States lack the capacity to respond to the great ecological disasters that we suffer periodically, such as the tragic cases of the
and, in particular, the
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It is fair to recognise that we cannot demand that each and every coastal Member State, regardless of its size or wealth, permanently have available sufficient physical and technological resources to respond immediately and effectively to major disasters and accidents. We should also remember that ships do not just transport goods to and from the coastal States, but that they are also part of the supply and trade chain of the other continental or non-maritime States, and therefore the latter should bear a degree of shared responsibility in terms of the risks involved in maritime transport.
For all of these reasons, Community measures should and must be taken in order to support and complement those established by the various Member States individually, though those States must remain primarily responsible for both preventing and responding to marine pollution. Amongst those support measures, the European Maritime Safety Agency is establishing a system for the collection and analysis of information on pollution caused by ships, which would include photographic surveillance by satellite, scientific-technical assistance and operational assistance, by means of ships spread out in different geographical maritime regions and ready to act in the event of accidents and disasters at the request of the Member States affected.
The present regulation is intended to provide funding for the next seven-year programming period 2007-2013 to cover the costs of these new services. The Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe supports the proposal with the compromise amendments shared with other parliamentary groups, and we congratulate Mr de Grandes on his good report and the work he has done in order to reach a consensus so that this regulation can be approved at first reading.
Nevertheless, I would like to say, for my part, that I am convinced that the greatest maritime pollution is not caused by accidents and disasters, but that there is a great lack of environmental awareness; certain unscrupulous people put their economic interests first and deliberately and wilfully clean out their ships’ tanks and bilges at sea. Satellite photographs may reduce such cases, but I doubt that they will be of any use on cloudy days or when visibility is poor. I would therefore advocate the introduction on all ships of automatic mechanisms for controlling the levels of tanks and bilges at short, regular intervals in order to ascertain whether or not they have been emptied into the waste facilities provided in ports under the MARPOL legislation. This should be obligatory, just as the black box is for aircraft and the tachograph is for lorries. This would be the best way to put an end to deliberate discharges of pollutants, which I believe to be the most numerous and damaging sources of pollution."@en1
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