Mr President, Madam Vice-President of the Commission, the work carried out by the rapporteur, Mr Sterckx, whom I should like to congratulate, and by all the rest of us in the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism has demonstrated that the problem we are examining, safety at sea, is a complex, difficult issue with numerous aspects. That is why a range of measures covering numerous sectors is being proposed and I too should like to refer selectively to certain of them, because I think they deserve comment. Anti-pollution fleets and the European Coastguard are issues which need to be examined by the Commission and the Council. The fact that double-hulled ships are not a panacea is a finding which needs to be stressed and the safety of these ships also needs to be examined. Tax incentives for returning ships to Member States' flags are also a particularly important factor, because in this way we can limit the number of ships sailing under flags of convenience. The need for there to be, at long last, as in aviation, a lingua franca in shipping between seafarers and everyone else involved in the sector and the finding in the report, that seafarers must not be made the scapegoat in the event of a shipwreck, are issues which also need to be underlined, for my part at least. Similarly, particular note should be taken in the report of what our committee is calling for, namely for there to be independent committees of inquiry in the event of a shipwreck, so that there cannot be different expediencies in investigating the causes and, of course, something which Parliament has noted for a long time, namely the need for both the Member States and the Commission to take specific action within the International Maritime Organization so that it becomes more active. This – and much more besides – is noted in the Sterckx report, but so is something else: the fact that there is a problem with the application of legislation which has already been passed. Before moving on to the measures which we propose for the future, we note that there is a problem in numerous countries when it comes to respecting Community legislation. For example, there is a problem with the disposal of waste in ports. There is Community legislation which is not being respected by at least five Member States. The Commissioner herself referred to ports of refuge. Here too, the Member States do not appear to be complying directly with requirements which they themselves set. There is a problem with port controls. There is a problem with compliance on the part of certain Member States with the requirements of legislation on shipping registers. There is a problem in the Council itself in relation to a regulation we are now discussing in our committee on criminal sanctions in the event of shipwrecks. The Council called for us to proceed in this direction and it would appear that the Council is going to come along shortly and say to our rapporteur, Mr Pex, that it is not prepared to discuss this sort of regulation. Consequently, looking at this, much of which came to light after the report had been voted in committee, our political group wishes to raise the issue of the temporary committee which will come and look at the application of legislation, especially the Erika Ι and ΙΙ packages, at European level. We need to see why legislation is not being applied and to stress to the Member States that they must move in this direction as quickly as possible. That is the purpose of our amendment and I should like to call on all the political groups to vote for it, because any other amendment focusing specifically on the question of the shipwreck of the Prestige does not, I think, constitute the regulation which needs to be adopted within the framework of this report. First, because we have already examined the question of the Prestige. What will we have to say that is new? It is as if we are cancelling the work of the rapporteur himself, Mr Sterckx, and of our committee as a whole. Secondly, because any committee of inquiry will create a legal problem. It is not officially called a committee of inquiry. It is called a temporary committee but, as it is examining the causes of the shipwreck of the Prestige, it becomes a de facto covert committee of inquiry and, consequently, it raises a legal problem because judicial proceedings are under way in a Member State and this contradicts the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament. And thirdly, we need to keep our eye on the ball. To see the wood, which is safety at sea, not the tree, which is the Prestige. If we keep on insisting on the issue of the Prestige, we shall simply transfer the internal Spanish dispute to Brussels and Strasbourg. And I do not think that does honour to the European Parliament.

Political group: PPE-DE