Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-04-19-Speech-1-155"
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"en.20100419.20.1-155"2
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"Madam President, one could talk at length about the European maritime transport policy. I am not going to do that and will concentrate instead on a couple of key points and core themes.
The first key point is the importance of the sector. Eighty per cent of world trade takes place via the sea and the European fleet accounts for 41% of that global market. Within the European market, 40% of all goods are transported by seagoing ships. This makes shipping a crucial economic sector and one that has to compete in the global market. When you understand this, the second key point follows automatically, and that is competition.
We know that many countries the world over support their maritime fleets in very diverse ways. If we were to allow this in Europe, then it would only take a few years before all our ships flagged out to countries such as Hong Kong or Singapore. That would not only be to the detriment of the fleet, but more than that, it would deal a blow to the entire maritime cluster. On-shore employment, in banks, shipyards, insurance companies, logistics companies, training and education institutions and in companies actively working on innovations and improvements to the fleets’ environmental performance, would be dealt an insurmountable blow if our fleet were to leave us.
Because of these two key points, my report calls on Member States to continue to boost their flags. We are talking here about providing tax breaks, such as the tonnage tax system for ships and tax breaks for seafarers and shipowners. That is the only way we will be able to ensure that both the sector and the maritime clusters remain relevant in Europe in the long term.
I have a question in this connection for the Commissioner: when is the European Commission going to come up with rules for State aid to sea ports? That proposal is supposed to come in the autumn, but I do not know in the autumn of which year. What is important for me is that State aid is granted transparently and that there is good accountability. We should not embark on this by supporting stationary terminals any more than ports which are geographically very close to third countries. In both cases, that would be tantamount to flogging a dead horse.
In this connection, I have a comment on paragraph 5 of the draft resolution, the English-language version of which talks about
. For me, that is a misnomer and I would have preferred something like
ships. After all, what we do not want are flags and ships that circumvent minimum requirements for safety and social standards. We are talking about the quality of the flag and what we in Dutch call
is certainly not automatically synonymous with a
.
To conclude, I would like to mention another key point and that is making the maritime sector attractive to young people. The population of Europe is increasingly an ageing one and so we need to do a lot more for our youth. It is never too early to start informing them about the maritime sector and sea shipping and I was pleased to hear that shipowners are even visiting primary schools to inform young people about working at sea.
Those were some of the key points I wanted to make thus far and I will be happy to respond to any comments by members and the Commissioner when I wrap up the debate."@en1
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"‘flag of convenience’"1
"‘flags of convenience’"1
"‘goedkope vlag’"1
"‘substandard’"1
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