Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-07-05-Speech-2-747-000"

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"en.20110705.41.2-747-000"2
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"− Mr President, I am very pleased to be able to take part in the debate concluding the long process of negotiations on the cross-border exchange of information on road safety violations. This is an important directive. It will make it easier for the Member States to exchange information on individuals who have committed road traffic offences in a Member State other than the Member State where the vehicle is registered. It will make it possible to identify the owner of the vehicle’s logbook, and will make it possible for the authorities of the Member States to prosecute individuals who have violated road traffic regulations, regardless of their nationality. I believe that adopting the directive will help to make the European Union’s roads safer. Ensuring that drivers no longer go unpunished will have a preventive effect. It will deter ‘road pirates’, who too frequently and too willingly disregard the rules. The aim of this directive is essentially to save lives on Europe’s roads. In spite of the obvious benefits arising from the proposed directive, it has been the subject of negotiations for a long time. A proposal for a directive was first presented by the European Commission in March 2008. The debate on the proposal was held during the French Presidency in the second half of 2008. In spite of the Member States’ support for the proposal and its main objectives, doubts emerged as to the choice of legal basis. As a result, the Council was not able to reach an agreement at this stage. It was agreed, however, that work should be continued in order to find a solution. The Council reviewed the dossier in July 2010, on the basis of a new proposal put forward by the Belgian Presidency. This proposal contained a new legal basis, in the shape of Article 87 of the Treaty, which relates to police cooperation. On 2 December 2010, the Council unanimously adopted an agreement on this proposal. The Council position was submitted to the European Parliament for first reading on 24 March 2011. At this point, I should like to thank Mrs Sender and the Hungarian Presidency for their efforts aimed at overcoming the various obstacles that have stood in the way of this difficult compromise. The final point of contention as regards this dossier was the correlation tables. An agreement was finally achieved thanks to the joint statement by the European Parliament and the Council and the separate statement by the European Commission. I greatly regret that certain Members of Parliament are disputing this part of our agreement. It took us a great deal of time to reach this agreement, and it would be inordinately difficult to explain to EU citizens why a legislative act of such great importance has been blocked in its final stages because of a difference of opinion on a purely technical matter. Correlation tables are one of the points of contention between the Council and the European Parliament. The Polish Presidency will endeavour to reach an agreement on such a politically sensitive issue. However, this will be significantly more difficult if individual legislative acts, such as the one the European Parliament is debating today, are blocked even though an agreement has been reached on their substance. I would therefore ask the honourable Members of this House to respect the outcome of the negotiations between the Council and Parliament and to vote in favour of adopting a directive which will help us improve safety on Europe’s roads."@en1
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