Mr President, what happened off the coast of Galicia was indeed dramatic and we must express our support for the people and our honourable friends from the area; of course, for me it is doubly dramatic because, by coincidence, this has happened in the country of the Commissioner responsible for transport who, as we all know, has made a tremendous effort to improve safety at sea. Be that as it may, I think it is up to all of us here to investigate what happened and why it happened as quickly as possible and of course it is not easy to draw any conclusions when you have a ship flying under the flag of the Bahamas, a country which, I may remind you, is not on the black list, it is hardly even on the grey list of the so-called Paris ΜΟU, a ship operated by a Liberian company, owned by a Greek and registered with an American shipping register, in fact one of the best shipping registers in the world, a ship which was built in China, comes from Latvia and Russia, was fitted out in Gibraltar and so on and so forth. So we need to find out who of all these was or was not to blame and we must, of necessity, be level-headed and persistent. I think that we will get to the bottom of this in the end and the European Commission will be a great help here. So what do we need to do next? We obviously need a set of measures. I have been talking with a number of Members over recent days who are all in favour of double hulls. Others want port controls, others are talking about the responsibility of the shipping registers and flags of convenience, others still point to the lack of ports of refuge. I think that those of us who happen to deal with these issues on a daily basis know that there is no universal panacea. There is no panacea, ladies and gentlemen, we need a set of measures, we need to proceed on all these fronts at once. If we are to do something about this, I think that, first, the European Commission needs to be strict in applying the Community legislation which is already in place. Countries which do not comply with Community legislation should be hauled before the Court of Justice and I think Mrs Palacio will do so. Secondly, we really must speed up the application of the Erika I and Erika II packages. We adopted 5 directives almost unanimously here in Parliament, ladies and gentlemen, and they obviously need to be applied, together with a previous directive on dumping waste at sea which – theoretically – is being applied. Now all that remains is to see if it is being applied in practice. We also need to push ahead with the European Commission's other proposal on a European Solidarity Fund. May I remind you that the European Parliament approved these proposals by the European Commission and that the proposal has stuck with the Council. So pressure needs to be brought to bear on the Council. I totally agree with a ban on the carriage of heavy petroleum products by single-hull tankers. May I remind you that, as rapporteur, I personally proposed this when we were discussing withdrawing single-hull vessels. Unfortunately, it is recorded in the Minutes of the European Parliament but was not accepted because certain know-it-alls popped up left, right and centre and said that the proposal was not feasible. I believed it was feasible then and I believe it is feasible now and that you should move in this direction, Commissioner. What Mr Sterckx said about environmentally sensitive areas is also right. We need to mark out corridors for tankers so as to ensure that these areas are not polluted. Most importantly at this stage the European Union needs to show its solidarity with the people of Galicia. We need to help these people. We have the Structural Funds, we have the Solidarity Fund and we need to do our very best to help Galicia get back to normal as quickly as possible. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE