Mr President, Commissioner, all the political groups have now agreed to debate this issue and have tabled a joint resolution. I think this is extremely important, as is the fact that the Socialists have changed their initial position, because the sinking of the Express Samina has not only shocked Greece, it has shocked the whole of Europe. We are not debating here merely in order to express our sorrow; the main subject of our debate is what happened, why it happened and how we can rectify the situation, how the Commission and the European Parliament can help from now on to ensure that the same does not happen again in the future. There can be no doubt that the human factor played a decisive part. However, there are aspects of the accident which, in my view, prove that Community law has been infringed. The directive on the registration of passengers was infringed. The Minister has admitted as much, the Prime Minister admitted as much yesterday in Parliament and I hope that the Socialist Group in the European Parliament will admit as much. The directive on life-saving equipment, life-jackets and life-rafts was infringed. Mr President, on Sunday, three hours before the deadline for applying Directive 98/18 expired, some 50 Greek ships were taken out of service by the Ministry of Merchant Marine. What amazes me is that the Government and the company both insist that the Express Samina complied with all the safety requirements. In other words, had it not sunk, it would still be sailing. The government itself says so. So what are we calling for? We are calling mainly for three things. Firstly, full application of Directive 98/41 on the registration of passengers. Secondly, a shorter timetable for Directive 98/18 so that there are no longer any derogations for Member States, as has been the case to date with Greece. Parliament consented at second reading under pressure from the Greek government at the time. Mr Stenmark remembers and can testify to this. And, of course, we are calling for an end to the derogation for Greece on cabotage, the monopoly and oligopoly arrangements governing transport by sea. Greek cabotage operators are running their new ships on the routes to Italy, where there is competition, and their old ships on the Greek routes, where there is no competition, and that is how safety standards drop. I should like to point out that all the Greek MEPs have now reacted against this situation. We do not consider that everything is a mess in Greece; there are some very good ships and the overwhelming majority of Greek seamen are very good at their job. We have tabled the motion as an expression of our awareness of the issue and our intention to fight for Greece to adopt even higher safety standards than the European Union in order to correct this negative impression of our country. Three amendments have been proposed by the Group, one on shipping registers, one on working conditions and one on an in situ investigation by the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism. We disagree mainly on technical grounds, which I do not have time to go into now, but would be happy to explain privately to my fellow Members. The problems are technical rather than political: for example, as far as shipping registers are concerned, the resolution already contains a reference to them and there is no need to repeat it. IN THE CHAIR: INGO FRIEDRICHVice-President

Political group: PPE-DE