Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-12-11-Speech-2-364"
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"en.20071211.39.2-364"2
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Madam President, Mr Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, as a postscript to this report, since the process is apparently drawing to a close, let me take the opportunity to express my sincere thanks to all those Members who have supported me in this work over a period of more than one and a half years. My special thanks go to Mr Becsey, Mr Degutis, Mrs Lichtenberger and Mr Kohlíček, to the Commission for its strong support and to our Secretariat, and particularly Mr Vervloet. It was certainly very interesting to see how colleagues truly became friends in the course of that year and a half as a result of working together. That is also reflected in the report we have produced. Thank you all very much.
On the report itself, we are confronted with a paradox with regard to European airspace. On the one hand, Europe’s airspace has been completely liberalised for the aviation industry and air carriers, while, on the other hand, there are still 27 different civil aviation authorities with 27 sets of rules and ways of thinking which sometimes diverge. As a result, the skies above Europe have not become any safer but are actually less safe than they were. This has led certain airlines to engage in a kind of licence shopping, in which they have tried to obtain their licences in countries where licences can be got more easily and where the rules may not be quite so strictly applied. The consequence has been very many minor incidents, some accidents and some disasters in Europe’s airspace.
The idea behind this report – an idea I fully support – was to create uniform rules governing air operations, certification of aircraft and aircraft parts and licensing of pilots. The aim was not only to create uniform rules but also to ensure that they were then jointly and simultaneously implemented. That was the Commission’s original intention, and a large majority of the European Parliament endorsed that intention.
Our aspiration, however, was to go further and make it easier to achieve the desired aim. We wanted EASA, the European Aviation Safety Agency, to become more efficient, to be able to act more swiftly and to be more responsive. It was the wish of Parliament that the controlling body of EASA, the Management Board, which still reflected and asserted the national interests of the Member States or the national agencies to some extent in its deliberations and activities, should be given a somewhat more independent position.
The second idea was that, since only two options had hitherto been available to EASA for dealing with errors and problems, namely to do nothing or to withdraw an operator’s licence altogether, there was a need to find intermediate responses.
The third point, which I consider essential, was that one group of staff employed in air operations with special responsibility for safety, namely cabin crews, was still the only uncertificated category of personnel in the entire field of aviation and that this had to be changed.
What has been achieved? With regard to the Management Board, we succeeded in improving the situation by securing an obligation on its members to submit a report to the competent committee of the European Parliament. We also managed to introduce a system of penalties which enables EASA to respond flexibly instead of having to choose between the so-called ‘nuclear option’ and no action at all. Above all, we also succeeded in finding a means of ensuring that cabin staff will henceforth be licensed. In other words, a uniformly high level of training, safety standards and all the accompanying attributes will now be found among cabin crews too.
We have managed to deliver a report that has largely won the acceptance of all parties. The industry was content with the report, the trade union was content, the employees were content, our House was content, and all but a few of the Member States were content with it.
The most important success, however, lies in the fact that passengers in Europe’s aircraft will be safer in future. That was the most important thing we could have achieved, and we have achieved it."@en1
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