Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-01-17-Speech-3-173"
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"en.20070117.9.3-173"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, the railway package is an interesting trilogy, and all trilogies contain an element of drama. Anyone who knows Mr Jarzembowski will know that he always likes to make sure his proposals are not boring.
The first two proposals attracted a very broad consensus in this House. I consider it a very good thing that we are talking about the liberalisation of the railways and are discussing the accompanying measures early on. It would be a shame to make the same mistake as we did with road transport, for example – namely liberalising first and only then looking at where further regulation may be needed.
This also applies to the European licence for train drivers, in my opinion. It goes without saying that there should be equivalence of training throughout Europe, including for the staff directly entrusted with safety-related tasks. We can hardly develop a European railway network when requirements for train drivers and criteria differ from country to country. Mr Savary has largely reflected Parliament’s opinion on this, and I should like to thank him for his report.
The same goes for passengers’ rights. Simply put, it would even be sufficient to say that rail transport should be punctual and of high quality. In many countries, people would be pleased just to see these two requirements met. Yet we have gone even further. My concern is that we are perhaps setting the bar a little too high. Whilst service quality and passenger rights should of course be respected, we should not set our sights too high, when we already know the kind of difficulties the fulfilment of all these requirements entails in international transport, in particular. In international transport, too, the same rules should apply. As the Commissioner has already said, it is unacceptable that passengers’ rights suddenly change when they cross the border from one country to another. The proposals regarding people with reduced mobility are particularly good.
I should like to remind the House, however, that the package originally contained a fourth proposal, which has been lost along the way. We must not forget that a certain level of quality is to be ensured for freight transport, too. The fact that we have introduced sanctions for this kind of transport must not result in its being neglected across the board for fear of sanctions being introduced in other fields, too.
On the subject of the liberalisation of the market, it goes without saying that international transport, too, must be liberalised. The same criteria must apply in Paris, Brussels and Cologne. The issue of domestic operation now arises. I hail from a small country, Belgium, where we have missed the boat on this to a certain extent, as the major lines are cross-border, for example the Aachen–Brussels line and the line running from Brussels to Antwerp and continuing on to the Netherlands. One question remains with regard to the small countries, however – as Mr Jarzembowski, too, knows – and that is who is willing and able to pay for these services and how can they be organised? This question must be dealt with alongside the present package. This can be done within the framework of the Meijer report, before we express our opinion on this subject in general. In addition, I support the Commissioner’s suggestion that we include the Meijer report in the overall package with this proposal by Mr Jarzembowski."@en1
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