Mr President, the Council of Ministers has presented a common position on mechanical vibrations. There are a great many good things in the common position. The best is that agreement on a compromise has been successfully reached in the Council. This means that there is now broad recognition of the fact that vibrations constitute a health risk, when it comes both to hand/arm vibrations and whole-body vibrations. It is also good that all three institutions appear to be in agreement as to a method of limiting these vibrations. The key to this method is the parallel introduction of action values and limit values that should never be exceeded. In the Committee reading, we talked a lot about the limit values. That is really rather a pity, however, for it is in actual fact the action values that are the most important for, when the action values are exceeded, the employer is obliged to do something and to take preventative action to change the way in which the work is organised. It is precisely this method which offers flexibility and emphasises prevention rather than injunctions. Moreover, I find it very annoying that it is precisely this flexibility and the emphasis on prevention that have not been recognised at all by the opponents of the proposal here in Parliament. That is a great pity, in view of the fact that they themselves often talk about flexibility and prevention rather than injunctions. However, there are, unfortunately, also less happy facets of this proposal by the Council of Ministers. The Commission’s original proposal has been weakened in a number of ways, and it has therefore been necessary to table some amendments. I will go through a couple of them. Amendment No 1 is a reminder that we still do not have the directives concerning the remaining physical agents. We know that the Noise Directive is on the way, but we are now waiting impatiently for the latter, and it would be appropriate if, by accepting our amendments, the Commission were, today, to tell us that they are as committed as we are to putting these directives in place. We have been waiting for many years. Amendment No 2 is crucial. As I say, it is good that the Council could agree to set a limit value, but when you consider how high it really is, you can also understand how agreement could have been successfully reached. The proposed 1.15 m/s2 constitutes a significant weakening of the original proposal. The report therefore proposes a limit value of 0.8 m/s2. We know from the internationally recognised ISO standards that it can be said with certainty that there are health risks with exposure of more than 0.8 m/s2. It therefore makes more sense to set a limit value in which the protection of employees will, in actual fact, be something real. There is no question of any tightening-up. All that is proposed is a return to the level proposed by the Commission itself at first reading, and there is no new knowledge to justify choosing another limit value. Some MEPs have repeated again and again that there is not one single proof of the connection between whole-body vibrations and injury. That is simply not the case, however. There is a quite clear connection between strong vibrations and injury. That is something that science is agreed about. It is true that we cannot put clear figures upon the number of people who will be injured in the case of a specific limit value. However, that is how it will always be when it is a question of people and their working environment. In such cases, the precautionary principle must be applied, and this is also something actually laid down in the Treaty. Amendment No 5 proposes shorter transitional periods than those proposed in the common position. Clearly, these could be applied in practice out in the real world. With the common position, however, we should arrive at transitional periods of up to 12 years, and it makes almost no sense to legislate for such long periods. Finally, on behalf of my own Group of the and of the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party, I have tabled an amendment that makes it possible to exempt agriculture and forestry from the limit values for whole-body vibrations. We have arrived at a compromise whereby agriculture and forestry, like aviation and shipping, are given the opportunity to be exempt from these limit values for whole-body vibrations. We have done this because we remained doubtful as to whether agriculture could, in fact, comply with these conditions. Allow me to emphasise two things in this connection. First of all, I think that the farming industry’s impact assessments have been very exaggerated and therefore not to be taken seriously. It has been maintained that farmers would only be able to work for two hours a day. That, I think, is wrong. I believe in actual fact that, in preparing the assessments, it has been forgotten that the directive only applies to employees and not to people who are self-employed. The second thing it is important to state is that this compromise proposal does not mean that we are giving up combating harmful vibrations within agriculture. It simply means choosing another method, and it is worth emphasising that the action values must go on being maintained. I hope that the Commission and the Council will respond positively to our proposal. I also hope that we shall obtain wide support for the proposals here in the House. The text before us is balanced and reasonable and fulfils the main purpose of this directive, namely to ensure flexibility in the workplace at the same time as ensuring that employees are guaranteed the necessary protection against harmful vibrations in the workplace.

Political group: PSE