Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-06-19-Speech-4-021"
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"en.20080619.2.4-021"2
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"Madam President, can I just first of all warmly welcome Antonio Tajani and congratulate him on his appointment. It is very important that he is here for this significant debate.
I want to pay tribute first of all to Zita Gurmai, who has done an excellent piece of work, not just in putting this report together but also in promoting the whole of the Intelligent Car eSafety programme.
But I just want to say to the Commission that it is a remarkable example of how a Commission initiative can bring people together across their own services, because as you will know Mrs Reding and her predecessor Mr Liikanen were actively involved in this. I am pleased to see my friends André Vits and Juhani Jaaskelainen sitting behind the Commissioner, because they have been instrumental in engaging all the participants together and really making progress; and I echo what Robert Evans says, it is a remarkable example of how the European institutions can cooperate together without heavyweight legislation and with a clear vision to move forward.
My only regret today, Mr President – and I hope you will take this up on behalf of Parliament – is that the other principal actors in the whole of the Intelligent Car programme are notably absent from the front row here, because the Council has a crucial responsibility here. The Member States are responsible in large part for much of the detailed legislation that will help introduce these programmes and help our citizens. Where are they here to listen to this debate?
I just want to make a couple of remarks to follow up what colleagues have said about the crucial issues of cars and roads. Let me say to colleagues who have talked about safety features in vehicles that the whole process of evolution of the industry has been one of technological progress; indeed it is true that safety innovations have started first on more expensive cars with lower volumes, and have then trickled down to become available on cheaper cars. Now all cars sold in the European Union will have anti-lock braking systems. That is an intelligent system because intelligence, in my view, is collecting and using information. This is what these systems do. Once you have that information collection system on, you can then use it for anti-skid systems. The incremental cost is much lower.
But if we have the eCall system, then we have all cars equipped with that external information-collection system which is what we want to interact with the intelligent highway systems too, where we are also collecting information.
Back in my region – and by the way, Robert Evans, the United Kingdom is now producing cars close to its historic high level and we have more car producers making cars in the United Kingdom than any other European Union country, so please do not run down our car industry – on my local motorway, we have Britain’s first intelligent highway which opens lanes and controls speeds according to the traffic flow, and I can tell you that not only does traffic flow more smoothly, but fuel consumption has also been improved: it is a win-win-win situation.
That is what this is all about. It is about winning by using intelligence and I hope you will all support it."@en1
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