Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-04-24-Speech-2-262"
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"en.20070424.46.2-262"2
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".
Madam President, the transport sector is vital to the development of our societies. Within this sector, maritime transport becomes more powerful each year and could really improve the environmental and economic landscape. However, for thirty years, the number of ships carrying crude oil, heavy fuel oil and chemicals that have sunk off the coasts of the Union has multiplied, with tragic consequences for economic and leisure activities that are associated with the sea, such as fishing, oyster farming, tourism, pleasure boating, and so many others. One ship goes down every three days. 1 600 sailors die at sea each year. More than 6 000 ships officially recorded as dangerous sail on our oceans each day. This is unacceptable!
Taking serious action means forcefully tackling the main cause of a lack of safety at sea. The flags of convenience and tax havens that harbour and protect them, the criminal complicity between the classification societies and the insurance companies – they are responsible for the waste ships, operated by crews who are reduced to near slavery. Given this state of affairs, the inspections carried out in EU ports should focus both on the state of the vessels and on the circumstances of the crew, so as to check that their training, working conditions, pay and state of health are compatible with the safety requirements necessary for navigation.
Commissioner, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, would you board an aircraft that had a crew that was incapable of communicating in a common language, a pilot who had not been paid for three months and a co-pilot who had not had a rest break for six months? Obviously not! Then why accept this for a ship?
There is another important issue: the creation of an independent authority to take over the Member States’ job of managing maritime crisis situations is inept. It would be ineffective, dangerous and non-democratic. The track record of most of the Union’s independent authorities, starting with the work of the ECB, is so disastrous for the people of Europe as a whole that I would not hand over responsibility for maritime safety off the coast of my town, Calais, to a pseudo-independent body, whose sole aim would, as ever, be to protect the financial interests of a few large companies.
My final remark concerns the plan to fit fishing vessels with an anti-collision system – in other words, a cost of EUR 2 000. Could this cost be borne by charterers and, in particular, by charterers of oil tankers?"@en1
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