Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-28-Speech-3-269"
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"en.20070328.20.3-269"2
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".
Mr President, honourable Members of Parliament, there now exists a sound body of Community legislation on maritime safety, but much still remains to be done. The Commission wished to supplement the structure of this legislation with a new package of measures designed to further prevent accidents and to better take into account their consequences. Furthermore, by submitting seven proposals, the Commission has taken the utmost account of the resolutions on the strengthening of maritime safety that were adopted by Parliament in the wake of the ‘Prestige’ accident. We are addressing them.
Thus, the European maritime administrations will be able to set an example. No ship will be able to escape an inspection in European ports. The inspection of inspectors, or classification societies, will be much more rigorous. A clear chain of decision-making will make it possible to provide refuge for ships in distress. Operators will better fulfil their responsibilities to their passengers or third parties. Finally, it will become possible to provide systematic feedback on accidents.
I am delighted that the European Parliament supports the ambitious approach proposed by the Commission. Your rapporteurs have produced an outstanding piece of work. The Commission remains committed to simultaneously examining the seven proposals and to preserving the ‘package’ approach, with the aim of ensuring that the proposed measures are effective and consistent. For technical reasons, you wished to examine two of these seven proposals in advance.
By putting forward a proposal on the responsibility of flag States, the Commission intends to fill a void in the European safety system. It is incumbent on the authorities of the Member States to ensure that ships sailing under their flags apply the safety rules. Clearly, the situation in Europe must be improved. It is not normal for member countries to appear on the grey – and even black – list, established by the Paris Memorandum. It is not normal for there to be so many differences in the rate of detention of vessels flying the European flag, from 0.9% to 24.14% of extreme cases for the period 2003-2005, according to figures taken from the Paris Memorandum.
Let us be clear. It is not a question of imposing a new layer of bureaucratic requirements for operators or national authorities or of adopting new safety rules, but of ensuring that the rules already in force are actually applied. The Commission proposal is simply aimed at enshrining in Community law the rules of the International Maritime Organisation, which stipulate that flag States must implement international conventions, and at enforcing a measure that is purely voluntary – the IMO audit system. Our aim is therefore to provide our maritime administrations with impeccable quality and, in this way, to work on the quality of our vessels. In doing so, we will have helped to prevent unfair competition from possibly developing among European maritime transport companies.
I now come to the second proposal. This proposal is about giving greater responsibility to shipowners by strengthening the liability scheme. The Commission proposes to implement minimum rules that are applicable to all the Member States in this area – civil liability and financial guarantees – and to lay down rules that genuinely make it possible both to prevent accidents and to compensate for the damage caused. Some will object that international conventions exist on this very subject. To which I would reply that these conventions are imperfect, and reflect two points of view. Firstly, not all of them have entered into force; they are even taking a long time to do so. Secondly, even when these conventions become genuinely operational throughout Europe in the future, there will always be scenarios that they do not cover.
Then, above all in terms of substance, these conventions have a flaw. They sanction a principle that urgently needs to be modernised: limitation of liability. More precisely, these conventions define the threshold beyond which shipowners lose their right to limit their liability. The problem stems from the fact that this threshold is fixed at a practically insurmountable level – inexcusable conduct. An insurmountable threshold amounts to favourable treatment for shipowners, to the detriment of victims when the damage suffered is greater than the limit of indemnity provided for by these very conventions. It is also favourable treatment for bad shipowners, to the detriment of the good ones. Shipowners who have been grossly negligent – on the scale of faults, one degree below inexcusable conduct – and are responsible for major pollution, should no longer be able to benefit from this privilege of having their liability limited.
Our proposal falls within this context. It is therefore both an immediate response designed to overcome the difficulties in implementing the international conventions and a first step towards modernising all of these texts.
Mr President, it is a bit late this evening for me to continue any longer. I might perhaps be able to respond to Mrs Vincenzi and Mr Savary, whom I should like straight away to sincerely thank for their excellent work."@en1
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