Mr President, Commissioner, this is, indeed, not the first time that this directive has been debated. I continue to think that it is a liberal directive that has one sole priority: the reduction of costs, to the detriment of security, employment and the quality of services. Indeed, the major problem lies with self-handling. Even with self-handling restricted to on-board crew and always assuming that, as remains to be seen, this will have no effect upon the social legislation of the Member States, ships’ crews or specially taken-on workers will, as you pointed out, be able to carry out loading and unloading operations in place of current qualified staff. Whether one likes it or not, self-handling amounts to allowing social dumping, even if it is now accompanied by references to security and to staff being qualified. Such a system would be dangerous to people because it would permit practices prejudicial to security: insufficient qualifications, ignorance of the locality and of instructions, a lack of understanding of the language and insufficient training. Any shipowner would, in this way, be able to call upon cheap labour, which would be dangerous for the ports and their environment. This problem also affects professions other than dock work, particularly those of the inshore and other pilots excluded in the first version and those connected with towing, which are subject to constraints in relation to the port authorities. I would add that, because the Council did not hold back the authorisations that had to be requested by the owners before having recourse to self-handling, the result will, as my fellow MEP Mr Savary said, be the introduction of the law of the jungle into the whole sector. Uncertainty is in this way being brought to bear upon all the qualified staff who until now have contributed to port security: the dockers who fulfil a very important economic task in difficult conditions by preserving security; and nautical services such as inshore and other pilotage services, universally recognised as services of general interest. All these sectors should be considered as essential partners contributing to the objective of maritime security and sustainable development. The proposal submitted to us cannot but have serious social consequences in the ports, and where employment too is concerned. There has been no genuine consultation of the interested parties. We are today being asked to vote in favour of a text that is rejected by all the professionals working in the ports. This is, it has to be said, a curious conception of democracy. Yesterday evening, here even in Strasbourg, employee representatives again met the groups to explain to them their points of view and to sound the alert. I think we must not remain deaf to this alert. These people have arguments we have to listen to. In conclusion, I am anxious, finally, to say that I think it is impossible to reflect upon this directive by removing it from the context of our debates on maritime security. Our Parliament has come out in favour of a temporary committee of inquiry on the Prestige. We have had a lot of discussion in this House of the various measures in favour of maritime security and, Commissioner, you have put forward rational proposals. Personally, I never forget that, in the various meetings I was able to have on the French coast, all the maritime professionals always insisted, following the damage caused by the Prestige, that security began in the ports. You spoke about coherence. Having said that, I find there is incredible incoherence in taking, on the one hand, positive measures concerning maritime security and, on the other hand, effectively destroying these with the decision on self-handling. In the interests of security, employment and the sustainable development of the European ports, we have to reject this document.

Political group: GUE-NGL