Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-24-Speech-1-128"
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"en.20070924.17.1-128"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I am aware that mine was the most complicated of the three reports and that, as Mr Savary says, this was the hardest knot to unpick. All in all I think we reached an honourable compromise in our discussions with the Council. I should like to thank all those involved, more especially the shadow rapporteurs, Messrs El Khadraoui, Rack, Zîle, and others, together with the Chairman of the Conciliation Committee, Mr Vidal-Quadras Roca, who in my view conducted the negotiations most skilfully, and of course the German Presidency too, as Mr Savary already said; I think Mr Tiefensee and his people put in a lot of hard work on this and were most persuasive in the Council; thanks are also due to the Commission people, the Commissioners and their departments, because I think we had a lot of help from that quarter too.
What did we achieve? An honourable compromise, as I said just now. I think Parliament has made sure of a few important things here. First, we have basic rights for all rail passengers, something that was not at all our goal at the outset. These basic rights are: guaranteed personal security, liability of the railway undertaking in respect of its passengers, luggage, the services it provides, insurance; it also means that disabled people have the right to travel, without discrimination. I think we have secured something very important for all rail passengers here: the guarantee of personal safety for all rail passengers. These are guarantees that the railway companies are obliged to give everyone from the end of 2009.
The second important point, to my mind, is that we have made a difference where it mattered, not between international and national traffic, but between long-distance and local traffic, in other words on the basis of objective data within a single European market we have said, look here, for these passengers you have to do these particular things, and for others we can't; so we are making a different distinction from the one between national and international. I think that is not insignificant. For long-distance travel we have secured a system of compensation and assistance in the event of delays, which also covers people who regularly suffer delays, for example commuters and season ticket holders; we have assistance for the disabled at stations and on board trains, certainly on long-distance services and hopefully for all passengers as soon as possible; we have got provisions on the handling of complaints included in the directive. We have distinguished between urban, suburban and regional traffic, allowing for exemptions, but only when these have been defined by Member States and on condition that they are subject to scrutiny by the Commission. I think it is not unimportant for Member States to be able to say look here, we distinguish between regional routes on the basis of our own criteria. We have set out one or two very specific rules here.
That, I think, is what the European Parliament has achieved. I began by doing my best to convince the Commission to abandon its original distinction between international and national and we then managed to persuade the Council to do likewise. The first was easier than the second, I have to say. We met with a lot of resistance in the Council but we managed to steer quite a lot of things in the direction we wanted. But we have had to agree to the process being slower than we had actually wanted, for example the provision that allows a five-year exemption for long-distance services which may be extended twice more. But again, that exemption will only be allowed if Member States and railway companies can justify it to the European Commission. It is important, not only that an exception is allowed, but that it has to be justified.
All in all I think we shall have made significant progress by the end of 2009. Basic rights. We are starting a debate which railway undertakings and regulators in the Member States, cannot dodge any longer. They have to make a start, they must at last start talking to passengers, rail users, about what their rights are and how they are going to guarantee those rights; and I appreciate that it will be a very protracted debate. For a number of reasons railway undertakings are not always the fastest of operators, in some cases not just because of their history and corporate culture, but also because we are talking serious investment here, and that takes time. My view was that Parliament had to take account of that too. In any event, railway undertakings and Member States can now no longer avoid talking about quality improvements and better customer service.
I think the third package generally is a welcome step towards a European rail market. An open market, a dynamic market, in which different players compete for clients, which means they have to look after their clients too. My report on passengers' rights is a contribution to this, I think; Parliament's position has been that on principle all rail users are objectively to be regarded as equal. I think Gilles Savary's report on train driver certification is an important step forward. In an open market you need that kind of thing to ensure that trains can operate anywhere and that borders are no longer an obstacle. It is a pity that we did not do what we should have done in connection with Georg Jarzembowski's report and market access. That we continue to differentiate between international and national and are not doing the same for domestic rail services as we are doing for international transport, namely opening up the market and giving players in the relevant infrastructure as much of a chance as possible. I think Parliament has rather missed the boat there, or should I say the train. We all know why that was. I do not know if we would have succeeded in the Council, but it is a shame we did not go all the way with this, as the British put it so nicely.
I think Parliament has done what it could, Mr President; we pushed the Council hard to move forward, as far forward as possible. Would we have liked to achieve more? Of course we would, but I hope the majority of the House will accept that Parliament needed above all to get a decision taken here, that we have exhausted all our opportunities in conciliation and that we have achieved some progress on the European rail market which is important both for the travelling public and for the economy of the Union."@en1
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