Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-01-14-Speech-1-163"
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"en.20080114.17.1-163"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would once again like to thank your rapporteur, Mr Stockmann, who has prolonged our dialogue. We – and I, personally – engaged in dialogue with the airports and the airlines. Thank you, Mr Stockmann, for having listened to both sides because it is not easy to establish, to some extent, the rules for good dialogue that allow balanced solutions to be achieved and that ensure that airports in dominant positions cannot abuse that position.
Amendments acceptable: 8, 10, 11, 12
Amendments acceptable in principle: 3, 21, 27, 29, 30, 33, 35, 40, 44, 45
Amendments acceptable with redrafting: 14, 15
Amendments partly acceptable: 7 (1st part), 16, 17, 18, 22, 35 (1st part)
Amendments rejected: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 13, 19, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 46, 47, 48
I will now respond to your questions, Mr Stockmann. As far as the number of passengers is concerned, we feel that 5 million is acceptable. It is essential to take the networks into account and I accept that. However, I am very reluctant to support the delegation of duties to regional authorities. This could be dangerous and I do not see how it would be of any benefit. We need an impartial authority that will ensure that the airports concerned are subject to the same conditions regarding dialogue and the determination of charges. I support the differentiation of charges according to environmental criteria. However – and I am going to come back to this – there is no reason to envisage any pre-financing of infrastructures. When looking at how to manage an airport successfully and the charges to be collected, it is obviously necessary to anticipate future infrastructure requirements. There is no need for pre-financing.
In addition to those answers, I would now like to respond to some of the comments made. Firstly, I would like to say to Mr Simpson that the directive has managed to stay away from regulation and bureaucracy. What we want to see is respect for the basic principles. The Member States have already accepted these principles within the framework of the International Civil Aviation Organisation. We do not want to introduce regulation for the sake of it. I honestly believe that we can genuinely say that we have found the best framework for ensuring good dialogue between the airlines and the airports, and, in my view, it is as part of this dialogue that progress will be made in the area of transparency. Mr Allister said that the directive was going to make regional airports more expensive. Quite the opposite is true, however! On the contrary, through transparent accounts, through this obligatory consultation, through non-discrimination among carriers, we will in fact ensure, particularly in certain regional airports, that there is complete transparency and that it is easier for the consumers, the passengers to travel by air, without any nasty surprises.
As I said, and I am responding here to Mrs Lichtenberger, the directive allows the Member States to establish charges or taxes on the basis of noise pollution or other environmental aspects. However, since this directive is trying to stay away from over-regulation, we do not need to define every one of those taxes. In response to Mr El Khadraoui, I would say that it will certainly be possible to adjust the charges on an environmental basis. The Council proposed this and I intend to support it.
Some of you have asked me about the problems concerning flight cancellations. To be honest, the text does not deal with that issue, so it is difficult for me to respond. There has been a great deal of progress on passengers’ rights, and that must continue. I would ask you, Madam, to contact me in writing so that I can provide a more precise response to your question, which, I admit, is quite legitimate, like that of Mrs Ţicău, who also spoke.
Mr President, I would now like to outline briefly the Commission’s position on the amendments. A number of the amendments tabled by your rapporteur strengthen the Commission’s goal of improving the relationship between airports and airlines. Mr Stockmann, the Commission can take over 21 of the amendments that contribute to that objective. I would mention, in particular, the amendment on the definition of a charge, Amendment 12, and the amendments on airport networks, Amendments 14 and 16, with a few changes to the wording. The Commission had initially proposed that the directive should apply to airports whose annual traffic is over 1 million passenger movements. The Commission accepts the new limit proposed in the first part of Amendment 7 since it seems to be supported by the majority of both Parliament and Council. However, 27 of the amendments tabled by your rapporteur cannot be taken over as they stand and would need to be discussed in more detail. These include, in particular, the amendments on security charges: Amendments 13, 21, 22, 23, 24. This issue was the subject of long and heated debates. A compromise was reached during conciliation and it seems, Mr Stockmann, that these amendments are therefore no longer necessary at this stage. In addition, the directive cannot apply solely to cases of infringement of competition law. As such, the Commission cannot accept the amendments concerning situations where airports have a dominant position in relation to their users. The scope of the directive is broader than that. We therefore feel that Amendment 7 in part, Amendment 16 in part, Amendment 19 and Amendment 20 are unnecessary. Nor can the Commission accept the amendments on the pre-financing of airport infrastructures. The collection of a tax before an infrastructure is operational is contrary to the principles on which the directive is based.
However, this does not take anything away, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, from Mr Stockmann’s excellent work, which, in my opinion, has considerably improved this draft directive. I have commented on a number of amendments, but I must once again thank Mr Stockmann and the Committee on Transport for the quality of their work and for helping us to move forward with this important text, which will enable us to structure the dialogue between airports and airlines. We want to prevent the users from being victims of this lack of dialogue and we want to prevent a situation whereby, due to a lack of transparency, a number of practices can be implemented without any real possibility of approving them. Those are the comments I wanted to make. I would like to thank Parliament for its commitment to this proposal. I think that it should provide our airports and airlines with the means of establishing permanent dialogue that will benefit all of the parties concerned."@en1
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"Stockmann report (A6-0497/2007 ) A6-0497/2007"1
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