Mr President, Madam Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, visitors in the gallery, we now turn to a Commission proposal to further reduce noise in and around airports. This proposal implements an agreement which was adopted at the ICAO Assembly in the autumn of last year and which applies throughout the world. Personally, of course, I have certain reservations about it because at the ICAO Assembly the entire system was changed. They abandoned the system of taking certain types of aircraft out of use altogether or suspending their use and moved over to a so-called 'balanced approach', whereby, instead of the aircraft being assessed, the noise situation at each individual airport is assessed and suitable restrictions are introduced. Apart from this general reservation – and after five years these provisions will be reviewed – we as a committee believe that we should implement the international agreements reached in Montreal, along with this approach of finding a balanced solution for each airport. This kind of noise protection, which will vary from airport to airport, at the same time makes it possible for us to repeal the hushkit regulation. We would have got into some difficulties with the USA and other third countries on account of this hushkit regulation, because from 1 April of this year the landing rights of these aircraft would automatically have been suspended. Thanks to the new balanced approach, which we have had since Montreal, we can do without the hushkit regulation and thus end the conflict with the USA, but here I also want to say loud and clear that the Americans should not forget to withdraw their Article 84 complaints if we withdraw our hushkit regulation. Because of the 1 April limit, we had to process the legislation quickly, and I have to say that our efforts have been very successful. There were some initial difficulties determining responsibility for the dossier with the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection, but we agreed that the Environment Committee would draft an opinion. We incorporated this in our report and held an informal trilogue procedure with the draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection, thus avoiding any dispute between the environment and transport areas in this House. I should like to thank the Vice-President and also the Council representatives very much for enabling the informal trilogue to reach a satisfactory conclusion. I should like to inform the House that there are two technical amendments which I will be tabling tomorrow, because in our haste we allowed two editorial errors to slip in. There are discrepancies between what we agreed with the Council and what the amendments actually say. But we will make the necessary corrections. On the substance, I should like to point out that we in Parliament have been successful on two central points. We have succeeded in changing the definition of the city airport. Until now airports have only been classified as city airports if there has been another alternative airport nearby. This has meant that there have been hardly any city airports. We have extended this definition by leaving out the alternative airport requirement. However, we did not get too carried away, so as to avoid a conflict with the Americans, and have said, city airports are airports as defined in Annex I. This can be amended by the Member States and the Commission in the committee procedure. This gives us the possibility of introducing more stringent rules on noise protection in particularly noisy areas and at particularly noisy airports. However, and here I turn to my friends in this room, the general call to increase the limit from -5 EPNdB to -8 EPNdB would lead to a conflict with the USA and would also cause internal difficulties, because the Member States are not at all willing to accept more stringent standards, and at the moment the airports do not want these either. This means that we should actually stick to -5 here. In difficult situations we can use the definition of the city airport as a way out. That is why I urge the House not to support Amendments Nos 21 and 22 so as not to jeopardise the compromise with the Council. Secondly – and this is also for all of the environmentally-friendly Members of this House – we have obtained the Council's agreement that we already state now, in respect of the review in five years' time, that after these five years we should seek to establish a more stringent limit than -5. This means that we have sent out a clear signal that we want to take account of public sensitivities and public health. But the same public wants to go on holiday; the same public wants to fly to the European Parliament. We therefore need to reach a compromise between the interests of the people who want to fly and the interests of those who live near airports. I believe that we have found that compromise. I would earnestly request that tomorrow the whole House convincingly approve the measures that we negotiated with the Council with the help of the Commission's conciliation services, because then we can conclude this difficult issue – which is so important in terms of foreign policy – at first reading.

Political group: PPE-DE