Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we have before us today the standard European bus directive, on which we adopted a position at first reading. The rapporteur then was Mr Murphy. Murphy's Law is of course famous, but I have to say that Mr Murphy did a first-rate job, because he recognised that this directive involves implementing a number of important political principles, namely access for the elderly, children and the disabled. We are fully in agreement with that. We need to do something for those groups: buses and public transport must be accessible to them and we want to put all our combined energies into achieving that objective. So why are we rejecting this directive? Because at first reading the Commission brought forward a proposal comprising over 100 pages of detailed regulations, and during the first reading debate all the groups agreed to reject the directive for reasons of principle. Now the Commission and the Council have come back with their common position, which is not 100 pages long, but 150 pages. At first reading we said that we could imagine at most three pages covering the key political principles. This directive contains some really choice passages of a kind you very rarely find. For example, on page 17 we have Figure 17, which is about permissible configurations for rear corner seats, and shows a plan view of the prescribed seat area, with both rear corner seats, in relation to Annex I Section 7.7.8.6.3.4, and as with aircraft design a maximum radius of 150 mm is prescribed. I know that we in the European Union have set the radius of curvature for bananas and cucumbers and goodness knows what else, but I find it hard to imagine that we now need to set a radius of curvature for the standard European bus. The directive also contains a formula that must even be hard for engineers to understand. I have to say that this document is not a suitable basis for political decision making. So the position is that designers, bus purchasers, consumer protection organisations and also disabled persons' organisations are in agreement with this directive, but are all very unhappy. They all say that we want to achieve the objective of using disabled-accessible buses in Europe. We in the Group of the want a new approach here, which quite simply means limiting ourselves to key policy aspects. First of all, that means standards for access for the elderly, for children and for disabled persons. This is extremely important and needs to be guaranteed. Secondly, we want safety standards for drivers and passengers. Thirdly, we want the principle of mutual recognition. The reason this principle of mutual recognition is so important is that a bus obviously needs to be different if it operates in a small poor village in Sicily, where it is very hot, as compared with a bus which has to cope with London's rush hour, with millions of passengers and where quite different demands are made of the bus. A bus operating in northern Finland, in conditions of extreme cold and covering great distances would again have to be very different. That is why the Group of the is calling for the rejection of the common position and is requesting a vote. We believe that it is important for us not to make everything in Europe the same. The European public is also opposed to this desire towards sameness. We wish to see mutual recognition. I have confidence in British, French and German buses, and that is how things should remain.

Political group: PPE-DE