Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-10-Speech-2-353"
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"en.20090310.31.2-353"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted that we can end the current Parliamentary term with the final adoption of the last of the maritime packages. I remember, however, that when I first came to the European Parliament in 1999, we had a serious maritime accident off the French coast with the
which gave its name to the first set of legislative proposals designed to avert and prevent accidents.
We thought we had warded off the danger, but soon afterwards, the coastline of Galicia was ruined by the tar from an even worse accident than the previous one: the
. Since then, we in the Committee on Transport and Tourism have worked on a succession of legislative packages in an attempt to overcome the excessive resistance we have encountered among shipowners, oil companies, classification societies and also certain Member States, which rejected the three proposals for being too stringent.
Over the last 10 years, we have adopted a number of directives and regulations, some of which we have had to go back and revise because they proved ineffective in their initial versions, as a result of the cuts made by the Council.
We adopted legislation to introduce double-hulled vessels, a European fund for major oil disasters, and ports of refuge, and now we are revising and adopting legislation on the liability of carriers of passengers by sea, the investigation of maritime accidents, the Community vessel traffic monitoring and information system, port state control and, lastly, the regulation and directives on ship inspection and survey organisations. All this is good and it is desirable that it should enter into force and be implemented by all the Member States as soon as possible.
I am pleased at that. However, this Parliament’s term is coming to an end. I am leaving Parliament, and I am going with the regret that we have not succeeded in making it compulsory to introduce control systems – which already exist and have been patented – to show when and what amounts of bilge and oil tank residues have been illegally dumped into the sea by a particular vessel. In other words, they are a kind of black box or tachometer that can be inspected by the maritime authorities whenever a vessel enters port.
I believe we owe the marine environment greater attention and stricter procedures to avert all the pollution we cause. I also think that, if we fail in this, it will affect our food chain and our lives, and we will end up paying a high price for it. I trust it will not take another 10 years to control illegal discharges at sea more effectively and efficiently."@en1
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