Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, first of all I would like to thank the many Members who contributed to this report. I would like to thank everyone who provided us with information during the hearings in Parliament and during our visits to Galicia and Brest, but also all those people who spontaneously sent us information by email or by letter, or who sent us entire files. All these cases were very interesting and they helped us a lot. I would like to make it clear, however, that the intention of this report is to improve safety at sea as much as possible. That is the only thing we were working on. First of all, we had to find out as much as possible about the Prestige in order to learn lessons from it. We then had to go through all the regulations, both European and international, in order to see where we could make improvements. It is clear that the Commission did not wait for our conclusions, although we had enough contact with the Commission during our work. Suggestions were made, and I think that the Commission worked quickly and well in this case. What went wrong with the accident involving the Prestige? One of the initial conclusions of the report was that there were no safe havens in the area where the accident happened. For me this is one of the two most important conclusions. The ship was moved away from the coast, and by moving the ship away from the coast they made the consequences of the accident, at least in geographical terms, more serious than they otherwise might have been. The Erica II package contained a guideline on safe havens. If we had applied this, the whole thing would probably have looked different. I am pleased that the handling of the system of safe havens has been accelerated. I hope that there will be a proposal for compensation very soon – the Commission has in fact promised that. We are also asking for clear management structures – and this is very important – for safe havens. The Member States had to report on the system in their countries by 1 July. As far as I know, they have in fact all done that. I would therefore like to ask the Commission to give its opinion on the quality of the documents it has received. What are they like? Would this have made cases like the Prestige less serious? Are we now establishing an effective system? That is the first question I have for the Commission. Another lesson I certainly learned from what happened to the Prestige is that we have to inspect old ships better. Either we have to take them out of service if we think that they are dangerous, or, if we think they are still OK, we must check them very thoroughly to establish whether they are in order or not. If all the reports are to be believed, in the case of the Prestige the inspection of one or both of the ballast tanks was certainly not performed entirely according to the rules. I think that it is important for us to also cross-examine the classification company and ask them whether they might not be able to tighten up their rules on that point. It is not sufficient to only look at the state of a ship at a particular point in time and inspect it every so many years. We also need to look at the way in which the ship is used. In the case of the Prestige, there may have been a problem with the ship being used as a mobile reservoir, and that could have weakened the ship’s structure. This was not taken sufficiently into account as it was not in the rules. We must make sure that this kind of thing does not happen again in the future. One solution we have put forward – or at least a decision that was taken very quickly – concerns the decision to allow the sort of material that was being carried in the Prestige to only be carried in double-hull ships. I agree with that in principle, but we must not regard this as some kind of miracle solution, as new questions are arising in connection with double-hull ships. What happens to double-hull ships when they get old? At the moment, all the ships are still new and everything works perfectly, but will these ships still be OK when they are 20 or 25 years old? Some specialists do in fact say that there will be problems with rust and weakening. The same things that happened to the Prestige can also happen to double-hull ships. We must watch out for that very carefully. I would like both the classification company and the Agency to monitor that properly. We also have suggestions for tightening up port state control and we have suggestions for following up the guideline on monitoring properly. There are so many things in the report and I cannot go into detail about all of them. When it comes to handling emergencies, I think that it would be a good thing if we were to have a proper European coastguard. I also think – and I think that the Commission's proposal is a sound one – that there should be an anti-oil pollution fleet that is managed by the Agency. We must not forget, however, that there is a great deal of expertise in the sector itself at the moment, and we must not duplicate the effort. We must make use of existing expertise. What I also find important is that there should be an independent body that investigates accidents in the maritime sector like the one in the aviation sector. At the moment it is particularly unclear who is undertaking such investigations. There is always somebody who is party to a case or who has submitted a claim or who must pay damages. There is never a higher, impartial body that investigates exactly what has happened. There is such a body for the aviation sector, and I think that there should be one for shipping too. I think, Commissioner, and I assume you are in agreement with me on this, that the role of the European Union in the international organisation must be strengthened. The Commission should actually be a member of the IMO and put its full weight behind it so as to ensure that we never act in disarray again. I do not think we have a major difference of opinion about that. The freedom of shipping is not absolute. A coastal country must be able to take action against a ship that forms a threat. If it is necessary to amend the international rules for this, then we must do so. We must ensure that safe havens are made compulsory in the IMO. We must regulate shipping in congested and sensitive areas. We must do that better than we are currently doing. It makes no sense to automatically tow ships 200 miles offshore, as this does not reduce the risk. This will not make the ship any better, and it will not make a bad crew any better, but the ship is further away so we think that the situation is safe. Mr President, you are being particularly strict; I hope that you will give me a bit more time. We must be able to exercise better control over flag states. We must pay more attention to the quality of crews. We must not criminalise the captain. This is important. This man is still under house arrest and must report to the police every day. I would like to call on the Spanish authorities to take another look at this case. In my opinion, and, I hope, in the opinion of most of this Parliament, this man is not a criminal, but he is being treated as one. Then there is the wreckage. There is confusion about this. There is much less oil on board than we thought. I have just received information from the consortium under the direction of REPSOL that is carrying out the work. There is still 14 000 tonnes on board, 13 300 in the stem, 700 in the stern. The central tanks, which we thought were still full, do not contain any more oil, just water. The difference between what we thought in January and what we now think is not the result of leaks but probably came about because more oil was lost when the ship broke up in the disaster. Preparations are continuing. As the leaks are small, no oil will be brought up to the surface this coming winter; this will be done in the spring. There are two more things I would like to say, if you would allow me, Mr President, and I thank you for your indulgence. I have asked for a separate vote on a number of paragraphs, because some things have been duplicated in the report. I hope that my fellow MEPs will be able to follow me in this. I made compromises on seven subjects; I am not going to list them, but I would like to ask everyone to look at them and to endorse them, otherwise we will end up with a document that is much too long. My final point is the temporary committee this Parliament would like to appoint to examine at this matter in more depth. I note that there is broad agreement on the principle. Both my fellow Members on this side and those on the other side of this House have submitted an amendment concerning the establishment of a temporary parliamentary committee. The argument is about its mandate. I will try to find a compromise tonight or possibly tomorrow morning. If I am not able to do so, I hope that this report will not be allowed to bite the dust on account of this, as only one of the 108 paragraphs is about the temporary committee. The other 107 are about safety at sea, and that is what we are dealing with here. (Applause)

Political group: ELDR