Mr President, I should like to begin, perhaps unusually for me, by thanking the various people who have made this evening possible, in particular the Commissioner and all her staff within the maritime unit of her DG, and the maritime safety unit in particular. Also the Council, who are not represented this evening, but it should go on record how helpful the Belgian Presidency has been. I should also like to say how helpful the French presidency was in making sure that we made rapid progress. I should also like to thank my colleagues in the European Parliament who stood together through this process, with the difficult challenges we faced, but which we overcame together. Because of that we are able tonight to celebrate a historic victory for the European institutions in the field of maritime safety. Together we have achieved a great deal. I will not dwell on the other reports. My fellow rapporteurs will do that. I should like to focus on my report on port state control, which is an essential part of our regime to make sure that events such as that involving the Erika never happen again. Two years ago today the Erika was a symptom of a failed system of maritime safety. It was not the first of its kind, nor, sadly, was it the last maritime disaster of its kind. It symbolised to me and my colleagues in the European Parliament the fact that the flag state controls had failed. The classification society controls had failed. The port state controls had failed and the IMO itself had failed. It is only because of the collective action of the European Union and its institutions that we have stimulated in the last two years unparalleled levels of activity in the field of maritime safety. Without the European Union, we would not be as advanced today as we are. We should all be very pleased that we have the European Union to spearhead action in this area. What do we have to be so pleased and proud about? I want to list some of the achievements that we have secured in respect of port state control. Firstly, there is going to be mandatory inspection for certain ships. That is an innovation and I welcome it. It means that the most dangerous ships will be inspected in future. Secondly, enhanced inspection for other categories of ships and, thirdly, the guidelines on inspections themselves will become mandatory. In other words port state control authorities will have to inspect certain types of ships in certain ways. Fourthly, we want the Member States that have been a weak link in the system to train and recruit adequate numbers of port state control inspectors. They will have until 2003 to do that, but it is a challenge for them and it is a challenge, I hope, that they can rise to. Fifthly – and this is absolutely critical to the success of this new regime – we want public access to the information. Again that is in the amended directive and will be made available via the Equasis database. Sixthly, we want the Member States and the port state control authorities in particular, to convey the information to the Commission so that the Commission can do its job in making sure the amended directive is uniformly implemented across the European Union. The seventh point, which I mention with a certain pleasure, concerns the ability to ban and detain certain ships – banning the most dangerous ships, particularly those that fly the flags of blacklisted flag states. I welcome the strong controls we have to ban certain ships from European Union waters if they have a poor detention record. That effectively will be a warning shot across the bows of these blacklisted flag states: over a period of time their ships will be banned one by one if they do not improve. A very important message will be going out from this Parliament. But also there will be the power to detain, in particular the power to detain ships which, by 2008, do not have a fully functioning voice data recorder, a black box. Again the message can go out tonight that by 2008 all categories of ships, if they want to come to a European port, must have a black box voice data recorder. If they do not have one, we will detain the ship until one is secured. Once more, I welcome the fact that we have all worked together to secure that particular achievement. The black box will change the culture of shipping. It will not just be a tool whereby we can learn lessons from disasters and apply them in the future. A ship with a black box is a safe ship. Our common aim tonight is to make sure the Erika and disasters like it never occur again. I do not believe that we will achieve that simply by adopting these reports tomorrow but we will have gone a long way to securing our goal to protect lives at sea and to protect the marine environment. But we must remain vigilant. Our duty now must be to make sure that the laws we pass tomorrow are implemented by everyone – the Commission, Member States and port state control authorities. That is our duty and responsibility. I hope we can live up to that.

Political group: PSE