Mr President, it is clear that safety is essential. Railway safety is good in most cases at the moment, and it is imperative that it remain good, at least as good as it is now. I extend my thanks to many of my fellow Members, therefore, for their valuable contribution to the debate on safety, and also to many people from the railway community, who have made a fair few suggestions, improved the texts, pointed out difficulties and so on. If a European rail transport market is established, there must of course also be a European safety system. We are creating that by means of this Directive: Common Safety Targets, a method for achieving those targets, and a safety authority in each Member State that uses a common method to give licences to all the parties concerned. Following the Council common position, we held a number of discussions, and there followed mediation by the Commission with representatives of the Council. We were able to eliminate a whole range of problems, as there were quite a few differences between the common position and our first reading. I have tabled a number of compromise amendments about these, which I ask my fellow Members to support, including compromise amendments concerning the driving licence for train drivers – for which we have found a solution via a new Commission proposal – and also concerning interoperability. I should also like to stress the importance of the agreement reached by the social partners (the trade unions and the European railway companies). Indeed, I should like to ask that the Commission transpose that agreement as quickly as possible, so that we also demonstrate that we attach great importance to the creation of a social framework for our planned railway reforms. I think that this is an important point, and that it must therefore be emphasised. A second point on which we reached agreement concerns communications and the crossing of linguistic borders, something on which I had laid a fair amount of emphasis. If Mrs Ainardi is in agreement, we shall move that point to the Directive on interoperability, and thus that, too, will be settled. There are two significant points on which we disagree with the Council, however. The first is the speed at which the new safety system should start off. The European Parliament wants to proceed more quickly, and I think that we should stand firm on that view. Secondly – as Mr Jarzembowski has already pointed out – working towards a European safety system implies keeping the number of new national safety rules that are introduced to an absolute minimum. Hence the importance of Article 8: the role of the Commission as supervisor of the system. We as a Parliament must stand our ground on that point. We have already reached agreement with the Council on a number of points, but one remains, and we do need to negotiate hard about this. Indeed, we shall see whether the Council is also able to follow up tomorrow the points on which we reached agreement. I think that agreement is possible, and we must strive to achieve it. I should now like to talk about the other reports and the whole package: we must keep the four directives as a single package. We must enter into the conciliation procedure on those four directives simultaneously. In general, the European Parliament is more in favour of an open European rail transport market and of European railway companies than the Council. The Council does not yet go as far as this: much less far than the Commission and Parliament. We must negotiate hard in the conciliation procedure in order to bring the Council a long way towards our position. The decreasing market share held by the railways speaks for itself: our Belgian railways again lost nearly 6% of the freight market in the first half of 2003. That is a very regrettable development. There is a small increase in passenger transport, but the situation regarding freight has taken another turn for the worse. I think that, particularly in our country, inland water transport and coastal water transport are poised to take over that market share. It is important, therefore, that the railways defend themselves much more effectively, that they ensure their presence on the market. The railways must become more efficient, much more dynamic, than is now the case. In some countries they are, but in others they definitely are not. Railway companies must not focus on themselves. They must focus on their customers, those who use their services, and they must focus on their service – ensure that they are giving their customers the best possible service – so that those customers stay with them, or come back to them. I think that this is important. Nearly every week I come across a company that says ‘We should indeed like to do a number of things by rail, but it is not possible. The railways are bad, too slow, too expensive, unreliable.’ In my opinion, these are very regrettable reports, and something must be done in this regard. That is the very first aim of this package of directives I should also like to mention that what we are proposing here is not wild capitalism on the railways. That is definitely not the aim of the directives that are on the table now. This is not an asocial or antisocial package. Indeed, my request that the agreement between the social partners be ratified took its inspiration from the social sphere. This package gives the railways the opportunity of ‘recapturing’ the transport market. My use of a military term is deliberate, because if the railways do not win their share of that transport market back, we shall really see some very serious social carnage.

Political group: ELDR