Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-01-17-Speech-3-152"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20070117.9.3-152"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it is an honour for me to present to you my report on the certification of train drivers operating locomotives and trains on the railway system in the Community.
I simply wished to say ‘yes’ to liberalisation, provided that it is regulated and that public services are preserved.
I would like firstly to say that this is an exemplary issue, an extremely unusual one, because we are talking about the transposition into Community law of a sectoral social agreement, in this case a prior agreement between the European rail companies and rail employees. All of this is laid down in the texts but, generally speaking, in our certainty, we quite often avoid this agreement between the railwaymen and the bosses of the rail companies, or more generally between the employees and the management, when really we should stop avoiding it when everybody feels affected by a European project and a directive. I am one of those who believe that, in order to create the Europe of the railways that is so essential, the railway workers need to be in favour of that Europe and to have the conviction that, far from starting a kind of economic civil war amongst rail companies, its purpose is to develop the railways.
The text presented is entirely exemplary. I would also say to Mr Jarzembowski, because we have always disagreed on this subject, that simply laying down dates for liberalisation is not sufficient to create a European internal market. This battle of dates is terribly restrictive. In order to create the internal market, we must first ensure that trains are interoperable, which requires considerable funding before anything else. In this regard, it seems to me that the liberalisation train is travelling much faster than the budget train or the interoperability train.
Returning to the directive, it will have little impact on Great Britain because there is only one tunnel entering its territory and it has little in the way of land borders. It will not affect Spain very much because it has a different gauge of rails. It will not affect certain other countries that do not necessarily have direct rail borders with the Union: I am thinking of Finland and Greece. Liberalisation is therefore basically about interoperability, and my report relates to human interoperability, that is to say, the recognition of a train driver’s licence throughout the Union’s territory.
I would like to thank the Members for doing such remarkable work. I would like to make the following comments with regard to the directive. First of all, we are talking about a licence for the whole of the network and not simply for the international network, since we believe that all train drivers should be able to aspire to move on to international level and that there is little difference between driving a TGV, a high-speed train, within one of the Member States and driving one that crosses the border. I believe that that is absolutely essential.
Next, Parliament’s great contribution – which also led to a disagreement with the Council – is that we believe that crew members who carry out safety duties must be taken into account in a subsequent text, and we propose a road map. Lives are regularly saved by crew members who have learnt a number of tasks: the evacuation of trains, the protection of passengers, signalling, the activation of certain alarm circuits. It is entirely legitimate for these qualified people to be recognised and, above all, for us to attempt to harmonise their qualifications in all European countries in order to prevent any of them from being under-qualified. This is a safety issue and not just a social issue.
Parliament has made a proposal on this subject, and we believe that it is very important to do so now: we are dealing with a world in which there is more than one rail company, and, since we are creating a Europe of railways, it is entirely legitimate to lay down rules on compensation that are applicable between rail companies when they exchange staff who they have trained. In other words, when a company spends a lot on training a driver and that driver leaves the company for another company within two years, we need minimum rules to oblige the company taking on that driver to partly repay the company that trained him. Since there is no railways university, training is currently provided by certain companies, principally the historic companies, and companies who are joining the market should not be able to benefit by becoming more competitive at less cost.
Commissioner, I believe that the European Parliament's proposals are right. I am entirely aware of the disagreements that remain with the Council, in particular the ones I have just mentioned regarding the scope. Nevertheless, I believe that Parliament’s position is the right one. I would remind you that our fellow Members, from all political groups, voted unanimously in the Committee on Transport and Tourism. We therefore have a strong position, which we will uphold in conciliation, just as we will in relation to the other dossiers, such as that of Mr Jarzembowski. I understand that he is in favour of liberalisation, though I do not understand ..."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples