Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, these three reports will indeed reinforce the measures our Parliament adopted with the Erika I package last May. Turning to the first report, by Mr Sterckx, there are two dimensions to the proposal from the European Commission. First of all, we are taking steps to improve the safety of ships, which is the foundation of maritime safety. I am glad that the responsible committee endorsed my proposal for a tighter timetable for installing black boxes and transponders on board the ships. Thanks to that provision, all European ships will have to be equipped with these devices no later than 2006. Secondly, we are proposing to Member States a Community monitoring, control and information system for maritime traffic, about which I in fact have some reservations, for there is nothing very Community-based about these measures. Although Parliament has endeavoured to consolidate its proposals, they remain dependent mainly on Member State action. Regarding ports of refuge, for example, the Member States must draw up plans for accommodating ships in distress. Parliament, in its wisdom, has called for the measures taken to be evaluated after a period of one year to ensure that the proposal really is implemented rapidly. We must indeed ensure that ships in distress can be accommodated urgently in these ports, which will have to be suitably equipped to carry out the necessary repairs. That is also why I am against the idea of zones of refuge, which do not offer the same guarantees as ports in terms of naval equipment. Another positive and important point is the improvement of communication between ports on the movement of ships carrying dangerous goods. With this report, the European Union has given itself the necessary instruments to ensure close cooperation between the Member States and offers them more means of controlling maritime traffic and making it safer. This helps protect Europe's marine and coastal environment, while also giving more rights to the captains and crews of the ships, including the primordial right to avoid accidents at sea and thus protect themselves. Moving on to Mr Esclopé’s report, it will enable us to add a new dimension to the proposed COPE Fund. I believe it is essential to extend this fund's scope for intervention to pollution caused by noxious and hazardous substances. We must ensure that this does not delay the first process. We must not confine ourselves to a compensation fund for damage caused by oil pollution, as we were tragically reminded by the shipwreck of the Ievoli Sun off the coasts of Brittany. The proposal to make ship owners who are responsible for maritime pollution contribute to the compensation of victims seems a good idea, since it is a step in the direction of establishing the liability of all the players involved in sea transport. This concept of liability was not defined clearly enough in our legislation. What is being applied here, and applied fairly, is the polluter-pays principle. That is a major and positive change, which may make it possible to put an end to practices that are dangerous and harmful to our environment. Thirdly, we will be voting on the report by Mr Mastorakis, on the establishment of a European Maritime Safety Agency. The Commission seems suspicious of its own proposal. So it has introduced several paragraphs intended to ensure it has a right of veto over the operation and activities of the future agency. Clearly, that would deprive the agency of the independence it would need in order to be effective and credible. I do not understand for what reasons the Commission wanted to place the future agency under its tutelage. Parliament has therefore endeavoured to reduce the agency's dependence on the Commission and give it enough power to justify its existence. Indeed, this agency must be created only if it is independent and entrusted with genuine tasks. I believe that the work we have done will allow the agency to be given greater responsibilities and to assume them with more independence. There remain, however, two points in this proposal with which I am not satisfied. Firstly, we cannot in a same report call for unannounced checks in the Member States, while also stipulating that these visits take place after reaching an understanding with the Member State concerned. To us this looks like two different types of visits, but that is not clear from the text and it would be advisable to clarify the matter. Next, I do not understand why our Parliament is not to have any representatives on the agency's administrative board when the Commission is to nominate four representatives from its ranks and four representatives of the professional sectors most concerned and the Council is to appoint four others. If we want to deprive Parliament of representatives on this management board in the name of the separation of powers, then we must also exclude the representatives of the Council from it. The Council is the Community co-legislator and the other arm of the budgetary authority alongside Parliament. If the Council is represented on the administrative board, there is no real separation of powers, so the absence of representatives of Parliament makes no sense under these circumstances. These reservations aside, I am satisfied with the basic proposal to establish this agency, as amended, I hope, by our Parliament. We have worked hard to give the European Union a single air space. Today, we have taken a significant step towards creating a single maritime space in Europe and I can only hope that we will take further steps in that direction, especially at international level, and that we will soon be able to learn the first lessons from the measures we have adopted.

Political group: PPE-DE