Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-10-Speech-2-335"
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"en.20090310.31.2-335"2
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"Mr President, the European Commission published its proposals on the Erika III package on 23 November 2005, and I hope you will allow me to pay tribute at this point to the Commissioner responsible for transport at the time, Jacques Barrot, because, with this new package, he has worked very ambitiously to improve maritime safety in Europe.
The most pleasing aspect of our negotiations with the Council, however, is that repeated bad behaviour will be punished. Inspections in our ports may give rise to temporary access refusal measures and to bans on operating in our waters, and possibly even to a permanent ban, in other words, a definitive prohibition on entering European ports and anchorages. This measure targets hulks.
To achieve this, there will be a tolerance limit – a threshold of unacceptability that cannot be breached, because ships issued with a definitive refusal of access to our ports or anchorages will be designated as hulks, which will have a deterrent effect.
We reached agreement with the Council on this point in conciliation, so the conciliation meeting on 8 December was very positive. My thanks to the French Presidency of the Council and to Dominique Bussereau, because I am quite sure that it was the personal commitment and all the work done by the Presidency’s teams that have enabled us today to submit a very satisfactory result, which I call on Parliament to approve without reservation.
The Erika III package puts the finishing touches to an overall legislative effort that has taken 10 years since the tragic shipwreck of the
off the coast of Brittany. It has allowed the European Union to plug what were initially some serious loopholes, in order to become an international point of reference when it comes to maritime safety.
In the wake of these disasters, European citizens angered by such maritime disasters had the right to expect politicians to respond firmly and vigorously to put a stop to irresponsible behaviour.
Our ambition was to create an area of responsibility within which each party involved in maritime transport must take its fair share of the responsibility for its choices and actions and, where appropriate, for its errors and mistakes.
The Erika III package thus covers several stages in maritime transport, with true complementarity between the various proposals – it is an overall approach that led us to view each of our reports as forming part of an indivisible whole.
Today, when this House is being asked to give its opinion on the outcome of a conciliation procedure that will bring a conclusion to this long process – more than three years’ work – we as rapporteurs are delighted with this joint approach, which has enabled us to achieve what I believe to be a very satisfactory result.
I would like to thank my fellow rapporteurs, who have all considered this general interest before turning to their own individual interests, which has allowed us to achieve, together, a good result that none of us could have achieved individually.
With regard to my own report, Parliament has got what it wanted on almost all the important points in it, firstly because ships will be inspected not only in ports but also at anchorages, as we called for. This is very important, because it means that ships will not be able to call at locations where they know they will be able to avoid inspections.
Next, we managed to get a very strict regime for conducting inspections: Member States will be able to cooperate to plan the inspections of a following port of call without harming the inspection of high-risk ships, and the interval between inspections of these ships must not be more than six months."@en1
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