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However, when it comes to safety, I am rather sceptical because safety in Sweden, for example, is in principle no different from safety in Germany, Italy or Austria.

I can live with these minimum standards, but I would ask the Commission to monitor the situation very carefully.

Should flexibility of this kind result in there being inadequate rules in some countries then we should work towards greater harmonisation.

My third point has also been mentioned already.

As you know, like Mr Rack, I come from a transit country, where this issue plays a particularly important role.

We do not want to make the conditions of competition worse for some countries unilaterally and improve them for countries such as Austria or other transit countries.

But I believe that we should do all we can to keep the transport of dangerous goods to a minimum, in all countries, whether they are transit countries or not.

Mr President, I would firstly like to congratulate the rapporteur, Mr Koch, on his magnificent work and his positive cooperation with the Commission with regard to improving the texts and presenting this report and this proposal; in the end there is only one amendment on the requirements for the aptitude examination for safety advisers in the transport of dangerous goods by road, rail or inland waterway.

We understand that it is important that the two institutions - Parliament and Commission - cooperate and work together and that the current cooperation with the Committee on Regional Policy, and in particular the transport group, is magnificent.

The common position includes practically all of the amendments accepted by the Commission and harmonises the minimum examination requirements for safety advisers and, at second reading, we can accept the amendment on the proposed date, which is much more realistic than the one originally suggested by the Commission, bearing in mind that we have now spent several years debating this question.

Very briefly, I would like to thank the various Members for their interventions and to tell you that safety is one of the Commission' s priorities in the field of transport.

As Mr Simpson has said very correctly, this is a process which we can never take for granted or regard as having come to an end.

The process of increasing safety margins and safety guarantees in transport is a process which must be improved day by day.

In this regard, I would also like to refer very briefly to the problems of the tunnels, which Messrs Rack and Swoboda have referred to, which, in the case of Austria, is doubtless a very sensitive issue, and great effort should be made to improve their safety.

In one of the worst accidents to have occurred recently, the goods being transported were not dangerous in themselves.

Margarine and a few kilos of paint which, in principle, do not present risks, led to a genuine disaster.

Therefore, we will have to see how the requirements guaranteeing the maximum degree of safety can be further improved.

Finally, I would like to say that we have to consider safety in all types of transport.

This week we will be holding a debate here on the safety of sea transport, in light of the Erika disaster, and in the course of this year we will have to discuss our objectives in terms of the safety of air transport.

But I would like to say that safety is a priority objective for the Commission.

As I will say in the debate on the Erika disaster, we do not wait until there is a disaster to deal with the question of safety, but we work on it even when there are no such circumstances, which simply serve to demonstrate the urgency for an effective response to this type of problem.

I would like to repeat my appreciation to all the speakers and especially to the rapporteur, Mr Koch.

The debate is closed.

The vote will take place tomorrow at 12 p.m.

Transport of dangerous goods by road

The next item is the report (A5-0104/1999) by Mr Koch, on behalf of the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism, on the proposal for a European Parliament and Council directive amending Directive 94/55/EC on the approximation of the laws of the Member States with regard to the transport of dangerous goods by road [COM(1999) 158 - C5-0004/1999 - 1999/0083(COD)].

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the directive on the approximation of the laws of the Member States with regard to the transport of dangerous goods by road, which entered into force on 1 January 1997, contains a number of transitional provisions which are only valid for a limited period of time, the term of validity being linked to the completion of specific standardisation work by the CEN, that is the European Committee for Standardisation.

Delays in the CEN' s work are now making it difficult to apply this very directive.

In particular, annexes cannot be adapted to take account of technical and industrial developments.

I regret this since we are having to take action because others have not done their job.

In this respect, I accept this proposal to amend Directive 94/55/EC which has been tabled for discussion today.

Should the European Union fail to take action, then Member States would be obliged to amend their national legislation for a very brief period, until the CEN completes its work, which would cause unnecessary cost and uncertainty.

The amendment to the directive on today's agenda does not therefore affect the existing harmonisation of the transport of dangerous goods in the Community.

It merely prolongs transitional rules by postponing deadlines, deletes provisions which are no longer applicable, and lays down the procedures for a) carrying out the ad hoc transportation of dangerous goods and b) enacting less stringent national regulations, in particular for the transport of very small amounts of dangerous goods within strictly defined local areas.

The amendment to the directive is consequently in full accordance with the principle of subsidiarity; the Member States obtain more powers.

The Commission decides whether the Member States may impose certain rules of their own. In so doing, it is supported by a committee of experts on the transport of dangerous goods under the regulatory procedure.

The procedures for the exercise of these implementing powers conferred on the Commission were laid down afresh in the Council Decision of June 1999.

The proposal to be discussed today, to amend the directive on the transport of dangerous goods by road, dates from May 1999, however, and could not therefore take account of the latest comitology procedure.

Two of the amendments tabled and adopted unanimously by the committee relate precisely to this amended comitology procedure.

We would like to ensure that there is a reference to this as early as the recitals and that the period within which the Council has to make a decision - which is not clearly worded - is set at a maximum of three months.

In addition, the need for greater transparency has been pointed out.

A further amendment allows the Member States to impose more stringent requirements, in particular for vacuum tanks, if work is done or goods are transported as a priority in temperatures well below -20ºC. This is in the special interest of northern European regions.

A final amendment is intended to ensure that tanks and tankers put into service between 1 January 1997 and the entry into force of this directive may continue to be used provided that they have been constructed and maintained in accordance with it.

I do realise that this is only a small step towards increased transport safety, but I would ask you to endorse this report.

Mr President, colleagues, a happy new year and millennium to you all.

I am speaking for the first time in this plenary part-session, so this is quite exciting for me, a little like first love, although that did last longer than two minutes.

I would like to briefly comment on the Commission' s proposal to amend the directive on the transport of dangerous goods by road.

It is good that this directive should be established now, as, otherwise, Member States would have to amend their national acts for a very short time, a period of transition, which would again mean unnecessary costs and which would once more increase concern with regard to EU bureaucracy.

The Commission' s proposal, however, does not take account of all the facts, such as the cold climate that prevails in the northern regions.

Consequently, I have tabled some amendments to Mr Koch' s intrinsically excellent report, which have been adopted by our committee.

My amendments concern the frost-resistance ratings for tankers carrying these dangerous goods.

According to the Commission' s proposal -20ºC would have been sufficient. On the shores of the Mediterranean, it is hard to imagine that in Lapland temperatures can fall considerably lower than that.

There is support for the EU in Lapland also, so let us remember them.

I have thus proposed that the frost rating be lowered to -40ºC.

This would be necessary to keep safety standards at the level they were in northern regions previously.

I hope my proposal will be taken into consideration in tomorrow' s vote.

Mr President, with your permission I should like to begin by expressing my admiration for the way in which you executed the quick changeover of the chairmanship just now during the debate.

I thought that it was quite superb.

On the subject at hand, I think that the people of Europe must be able to be confident that the goods - however dangerous they are - which are transported on Europe's roads, railways, and so on are as safe as possible.

This directive is a contribution to this.

What we are doing today is essentially a nuisance.

The rapporteur, Mr Koch, to whom we express our thanks for the work which he has done on this, has already pointed out that basically everything could have been somewhat more advanced had it not been for the inactivity on the part of the CEN, which has been very dilatory in drawing up and adapting the directive.

That is why we can only hope - and we should resolve all of this this week - that, in 2001, we will finally have Community regulations for the transport of dangerous goods by road so that we have a degree of legal certainty here and also so that our roads are a good deal safer.

Mr President, the report we are discussing here does not, in itself, entail any major changes.

Most of the proposed amendments are of a purely technical nature.

It is nonetheless worth emphasising that, each time we make this type of decision, it is good from a broad environmental perspective and it is beneficial because it creates better prior conditions for exploiting the possibilities of the internal market.

Very large quantities of dangerous goods are transported around the EU, both on roads and railways and by sea.

This makes it necessary to have proper rules governing transport of this kind.

In area after area, we are now obtaining common minimum regulations for the Member States.

This is extraordinarily positive, and there is cause to thank the rapporteur, Mr Koch, for the work he has put in on this issue.

This is also important where the prerequisites for the internal market are concerned.

If we are to get a common transport market genuinely up and running, it is important that we should not only have regulations but that these regulations should also, as far as possible, apply to every country.

I should like to conclude by commenting on a third matter which is also of significance, namely an amendment tabled by Member of Parliament, Mr Ari Vatanen.

In many ways, the prerequisites differ from one Member State to another.

By approving this amendment, we take account of the fact that it can be very cold in the northern parts of the European Union.

This makes it necessary to also take account of the ways in which materials and packaging are affected by cold of this kind.

It is good that, in establishing the present regulations, we can also be flexible.

I hope that the Commission is able to accept the present amendment.

Mr President, I would like to thank not only Mr Koch, but also the Vice-President of the Commission for the clear and unambiguous way in which they have declared their support for safety in the transport sector and acknowledged it as a priority.

The reason Mr Koch produced his sound report was because the work in the CEN and within the United Nations Economic Commission was proceeding none too expeditiously.

I would like to ask the Vice-President if she is in a position to tell us today what the state of play is with regard to the efforts towards harmonisation being made by these two organisations, and whether the EU is in a position to hasten these harmonisation efforts, in accordance with principles that are as simple as possible.

For one thing is clear: even if we come to an excellent arrangement within the European Union, traffic does not stop at our borders, it goes beyond them.

Hence there is certainly every reason to introduce more far-reaching regional provisions.

If the Commissioner is unable to do so today then would she be prepared to inform the committee in writing of how matters stand and what stage negotiations between the CEN and the Economic Commission are at?

Mr President, I would once again like to congratulate Mr Koch on his magnificent work on this other report, which in a way supplements the debate which we held in October on rail transport.

We all regret that the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) has not been able, in the required time, to carry out the amendment of the provisions necessary for the required harmonisation within the European Union.

This debate and the amendment of the directive currently in force allow us to incorporate differentiating elements which demonstrate the diversity of this Europe of ours.

A moment ago, Mr Vatanen spoke to us of lower temperatures, not of 20 degrees below zero, but of 40 degrees below zero.

Of course, we accept that amendment - it is absolutely right - and I believe that we should incorporate specific circumstances which demonstrate the climatic diversity of the European Union, which sometimes take the form of specifics and of concrete requirements for the establishment of standards and characterisations of a technical nature.

I would like to say, with regard to Mr Swoboda' s comments on the activity of the CEN, that we are urging them to speed up their work as much as possible because it would be terrible if, despite the new deadline, we were to find ourselves after a year and a bit with the same difficulties because their work has not been concluded.

Lastly, Mr President, the basic problems justifying this amendment of the directive have been pointed out. We have referred to the delay by the CEN, the amendment of certain provisions, the consistency between the text of the directive and the content of the annexes and the need to for it to be more specific.

The Commission accepts all of the contributions of the parliamentary committee and the rapporteur, Mr Koch, which are contained in the various amendments, specifically four.

We therefore accept the four amendments which have been proposed.

Structural Funds - Cohesion Fund coordination

The next item is the report (A5-0108/1999) by Mrs Schroedter, on behalf of the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism, on the communication from the Commission in the field of the Structural Funds and their coordination with the Cohesion Fund: guidelines for programmes in the period 2000-2006 [COM(1999)344 - C5-0122/1999 - 1999/2127(COS)].

Mr President, it is particularly pleasing for me to make my first speech in the European Parliament on what is regarded as the most important issue within that part of the United Kingdom that I represent in this Parliament, namely Wales.

A major part of Wales, as you know, has been granted Objective 1 status under the Structural Funds programme.

It is quite clear that many people within Wales are looking to the European Structural Funds programme to alleviate some of the great difficulties that we undoubtedly face.

We have seen poverty growing in Wales; and growing still further since 1997.

We have seen the gap between rich and poor widen.