Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-01-17-Speech-3-154"
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"en.20070117.9.3-154"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Federal Minister, Mr Tiefensee, who is unfortunately unable to be with us due to an important appointment, I would like to express my gratitude for this opportunity to address you all today.
I would now like to move on to the second piece of legislation in the Third Railway Package, namely the proposal relating to the rights and obligations of passengers, which aims not only to improve the rights of consumers but also to promote the long-term attractiveness of railway use within the Community. The significance of this proposed regulation for those with mobility disabilities should also be pointed out, as the regulation would make rail travel considerably easier for them.
The Council's Common Position overlaps, in many respects, with what your House is calling for, in, for example, taking up the COTIF/CIV provisions on the liability of railway undertakings for personal injury or damage to baggage and the conclusion of transport contracts.
There are, however, differences, in particular when it comes to the scope of the regulation. By way of deviation from the Common Position, the European Parliament’s Committee on Transport and Tourism is calling for the regulation to apply, in principle, to domestic rail traffic. It was, however, particularly difficult to reach agreement on this point in the Council. It is the Presidency’s view that the compromise embodied by the Common Position ought therefore not to be jeopardised.
The same applies to the third and final legislative strand of the Third Railway Package, the directive on liberalisation. The Common Position, which we have reached with all the Member States through considerable effort, provides for the opening up of international markets for passenger transport, including cabotage in connection with international journeys, as of 2010, but initially without opening up the national networks. It is very much to be welcomed that your House’s Committee on Transport and Tourism agrees with the date of 2010.
On the very difficult topic of opening up the national networks, your House has proposed a new compromise. Although I very much commend such a move, we do have serious doubts about the possibility of reaching agreement on the basis of this compromise proposal. In this regard, the compromise proposal also represents a move away from the step-by-step approach that has characterised the liberalisation so far, and so it is to be feared that many Member States will fail to see the new compromise as a compromise at all.
In the case of the opening up of national rail networks, the question must be asked as to whether we are not asking too much of many of the Member States. In the light of the desired joint approval of all three legislative proposals, we must allow ourselves to ask whether, by pushing for the highest requirements in relation to passenger transport, we are not ruining the much more urgently required solutions for freight transport.
I am aware that it will not be easy to reach agreement on this issue. Europe’s passenger rail services must be attractive and reliable. Parliament and the Council therefore need to recognise their joint responsibility and live up to it.
I think I can say that the Third Railway Package is so important to all of us that all of us must surely have an interest in coming to an agreement. The German Presidency of the Council will be pulling out all the stops to make it a success and to realise the integrated rail area that we desperately need. To do so does require bold changes, but it also calls for a sense of proportion and a little patience from time to time. The Council and Parliament have, in the past, often proven their good faith and achieved mutually acceptable compromises from mutually opposing positions.
We are not afraid of searching out a durable compromise through a sensible conciliation process. However, I call on Parliament not to introduce a large number of material amendments and thereby make reaching a consensus an almost impossible task before we begin. I think I have got the message through.
The German Presidency of the Council is just getting under way and already, with the upcoming vote on the proposals for the Third Railway Package, we have before us on the agenda one of the most important dossiers of this six months’ Presidency in the field of transport. These three measures will bring us a significant step closer to the complete opening up of the market and thus to the completion of the European railway area, continuing what we began together with the first programmes of measures.
Through the First Railway Package, adopted in 2001, we made it possible for individual rail freight companies to make practical, independent use of neighbouring railway networks in cross-border traffic.
Adopting the Second Railway Package brought us to a further milestone on our journey towards the realisation of a single market in railways in Europe, something which is urgently needed. Thus, on 1 January 2007, the opening up of markets for freight traffic became a reality. This step represents great progress in which the Council and Parliament can take pride in equal measure.
This opening up of markets is made urgently necessary by the tremendous rate at which freight traffic is increasing, but that will hardly be news to you. According to the Commission’s estimates, there will be a 45% increase in road freight traffic by 2020, which would mean an extra 1.5 million lorries on the roads. The railways, by contrast, still have great potential available for us to exploit. We therefore urgently need, above all, to get more freight transported by rail.
If the opening up of the markets is to be more than just a date, we need to invigorate the process and put all our energies into ensuring that those obstacles still in place are quickly removed. One part of this is also to ensure that it is also possible, in reality, to employ the staff carrying out freight transport operations – in particular the train drivers – on a cross-border basis without obstacles. Regulations of this nature have been laid down in what is termed the directive on the certification of train drivers, on which a decision is now due.
I see no major differences between the positions of the Council and Parliament in respect of this piece of legislation, although there are a couple of points I would like to make. Firstly, the committee now seeks to ensure – by means of amending Article 1 of the directive – that staff not working as train drivers but performing safety-related tasks are also required to undergo certification. In principle, this approach is correct. The question, however, is to whom it is to apply. The phrase ‘other crew members performing safety-related tasks’ is so vague that we are at a complete loss to say who exactly it would cover.
In my opinion, it is worth clearing this up before doing anything else. Only then can we decide under what conditions and on what terms a certificate is necessary. The Council's Common Position did take account of this issue. The Common Position stipulates that the European Railway Agency (ERA) should examine whether additional staff should be certified. The ERA can thus help us to work out under what conditions it makes sense to certify staff other than train drivers. We should await the results of the ERA’s investigation before we rush to include this item in the directive prematurely.
Secondly, it is proposed in Amendment 23 that, if a train driver moves to a different undertaking, there should be statutory compensation for training costs. There is a consensus between the Council and Parliament on this matter as far as content in concerned. Yet why should we regulate this matter through legislation, when contractual solutions could be much more effective? It is envisaged in the Council’s Common Position that management and labour should regulate the transfer of training costs contractually. To that extent there are, in fact, no differences."@en1
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