B4-0380, 0381, 0396, 0401, 0406, 0414 and 0417/99

Resolution on the accident in the Mont Blanc tunnel

The European Parliament,

A. whereas the Mont Blanc road tunnel links France and Italy under the Alps and is some 11.5 km long and single bore, and whereas each day more than 2000 lorries pass through the tunnel,

B. whereas the tunnel was opened in 1965 and was designed to deal with a considerably smaller volume of traffic than the current level; whereas in 1965, 5300 heavy goods vehicles used the tunnel; whereas by 1998 that figure had risen to 766 000; whereas this is 12.7 million tonnes of the 25 million tonnes of freight transported by road through the Alps,

C. whereas the tunnel built in 1965 does not have a lateral safety tunnel to enable people inside the tunnel to escape and whereas there are also no routes enabling emergency services to intervene rapidly,

D. whereas the specialist services encountered major difficulties in getting through the fire, smoke and extreme heat in order to rescue users and the first firemen who had managed to enter the tunnel and whereas the damage seems to have been aggravated by the poor safety equipment of the tunnel despite the warnings given particularly in January 1999 by the Haute-Savoie fire service,

E. whereas there are official inquiries into the incident to be taken into account,

The European Parliament,

1. Extends its most sincere condolences to the families of the victims of the fire and of the French fireman and Italian motorbike agent who died rescuing motorists from the tunnel;

2. Believes that it would be inappropriate to draw conclusions before the report of the inquiry is published;

3. Reiterates that transport safety has been and will remain Parliament's transport policy priority and calls upon the Commission and the Council to work with it to ensure that allocations to the Community's transport safety budget line reflect this;

4. Calls on the Council to adopt the proposed directive regarding the roadside inspection of the roadworthiness of commercial vehicles circulating within the Community as soon as possible;

5. Calls on the Commission to adopt a European initiative as soon as possible to ensure that appropriate safety standards are applied in road and rail tunnels;

6. Calls for cross-border cooperation between civil protection units and disaster relief units to receive ample support, particularly by means of an effort to ensure that emergency equipment is compatible;

7. Underlines once again its commitment to sustainable transit across the Alps and the pressing need to shift traffic from road to rail and in this regard urges progress on the Lyon-Turin rail link, part of one of the transport TENs Essen priority projects, and reaffirms its support for a European policy of major investment in transport infrastructure; regrets, in this context, the numerous log-jams which have occurred in decisions adopted by the Ecofin Council and relating to the financing of TEN transport networks;

8. Calls on the Member States to consider the need to equip those tunnels which do not already have them with a safety tunnel to enable them to be evacuated rapidly in the event of an accident or a fire;

9. Calls on the Community authorities and on the French, Italian and local authorities to find immediate transitional solutions both for goods traffic and for tourist traffic in collaboration with Switzerland in order to alleviate problems of congestion on the access route to the Fréjus tunnel without, of course, jeopardising safety provisions or environmental standards;

10. Notes the attempts of the French government to examine options such as speed limits, tariffs and the limitation of the number of lorries per hour;

11. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission and the governments of France, Italy and Switzerland.