Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-28-Speech-3-271"
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"en.20070328.20.3-271"2
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"Mr President, just the once will not hurt, and are we not much better off for it? We are going to be able to legislate on a maritime safety package without any accidents having taken place. On previous occasions, we had to mourn the sinking of the ‘Erika’, a catastrophic sinking with pollution at sea and the very difficult task of salvaging the wreckage, and the sinking of the ‘Prestige’, about which you know more than anyone, as a Spanish national, and which had a huge impact on our coastlines.
Therefore, I believe that the Commissioner should be congratulated for having proposed to us this package of seven texts, which must remain a broad-based proposal from the Commission and the European Parliament to the Council, even though two of them are slightly ahead of their time. We have worked hard on this matter, and I should like, in this regard, to thank all of my colleagues, in particular the other political groups, for the excellent work that we have been able to produce and for the outstanding vote that we have obtained, which testifies to a very strong desire from Parliament to genuinely signal its consent, today, to this ‘maritime safety’ package.
It naturally falls to me to present you with a report – and probably a rather complicated one at that – on the civil liability of shipowners and of financial guarantees responsible for basically covering damages to third parties. We are not talking here about damages between two vessels that might collide, or between parties involved in the transport chain, that is to say, between charterers and shipowners, but about damage caused to third parties, in particular environmental damage.
What the Commission is proposing – and I believe that this is really the minimum that should be asked of the Member States – is to ratify the major International Maritime Organisation conventions on liability and compensation of third parties. From this perspective, there is a general convention that covers all kinds of damages, the LLMC, which has not been ratified by a number of Member States, particularly in its 1996 version. The HNS Convention, which concerns chemical risks, has not been ratified. We are completely exposed today to chemical risks, much more so than to oil risks, and we know that what is transported on Europe’s seas is often very dangerous. Then there are two other conventions: one on the protection of people abandoned at sea – you will have heard about these crazy situations in which sailors cannot leave their vessel after the shipowner has gone bankrupt and who remain berthed for months on end – and one on liability for damage produced by bunker oil, otherwise known as degassing.
What the Commission is therefore proposing is to have these conventions ratified. Parliament voted for this proposal and wanted all these conventions – particularly the chemical convention – to be ratified. This was not proposed directly by the Commission, but we would stress our desire to ratify. Secondly, we believe that a regime for withdrawing the benefit of limitation of liability should be implemented for ships that belong to States that have refused to ratify the conventions, whether they be non-EU States or EU Member States that balk at doing so. I believe that Mr Jarzembowski is very keen on this increased clampdown on ships belonging to States that have not ratified, the aim being to encourage them to do so. In such cases, it is not inexcusable conduct that is reprehensible, but gross negligence, and gross negligence means that, in actual fact, the liability and compensation regime is infinitely more severe.
Finally, we have endorsed the Commission proposal to create a financial guarantee certificate and to monitor it by creating, within the Maritime Safety Agency or elsewhere, an office providing information on the validity of the certificates, particularly for ships that pass through territorial waters and that do not dock at ports, the aim being to guarantee a maximum level of safety.
I believe, ladies and gentlemen, that this is a text that does credit to the European Parliament and that drives the Member States into a corner. I am one of those who greatly suffered, when the ‘Erika’ went down, on hearing a number of Heads of State or Government, including my own, undermine Europe by saying: ‘ ‘Erika’ is Europe’s fault; there is no legislation’. Well, today, there is legislation. It is extremely strict, and we dare the Council and the Member States to implement it."@en1
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