Brussels, 18/03/2013 (Agence Europe) -After the December plenary rejected a committee re-examination of baggage handling services, the second round of first reading voting will take place on Tuesday 19 March in the Parliamentary transport committee. On Monday, MEPs were still very divided on the issue.
At the end of 2012, the European Commission proposed a legislative package that was supposed to improve the performance of European airports. This package included legislative amendments in three different areas: landing and take-off slots, noise pollution and baggage handling. It is this last that has caused the greatest concern to MEPs, who have many misgivings about the idea of liberalising the services in the biggest European airports, breaking up the duopoly enjoyed by service providers in this area. TRAN committee MEPs will vote again on the subject on Tuesday 19 March but the few months that have elapsed since the first vote have not been enough to dissipate tension in this area. The amendments still call for rejection, pure and simple, of the Commission proposals (in this event, the Commission is threatening to withdraw its whole airport package).
This time, many compromise amendments have been accepted by the groups, particularly on the call for common airport tenders and minimum standards to respect by airports. The minimum passenger threshold could also be increased every year, determining the airports affected by the liberalisation. Nonetheless, the social aspect and subsidiarity still appeared to be polarising MEPs. The rejection of the Commission proposal as a whole, is still a very current and important issue. The Greens consider that there is no doubt about this and Michael Cramer MEP (Greens/EFA, Germany) declared during the debate preceding the vote that “it would be a farce to compromise on such a small number of airports. We are therefore sticking to our position and hoping for a plenary rejection”. The same hard line was adopted by his Austrian colleague, Eva Lichtenberger: “I think that this dossier is counter-productive, if only on the legislative level, with rules for three or four airports”. The Socialists appeared less hard-line and the spokesperson for transport, Saïd El Khadraoui (Belgium) said that he did not want to maintain the status quo: “Current legislation is bad but I'm not in favour of the Commission proposal. I am, on the contrary, still in favour of improving the text”. If the group's proposal on flexibility on the number of service providers is accepted, the Socialists might then give their support to the text. The Christian Democrat group, speaking through Mathieu Grosch, affirmed that it would not be speaking with a single voice on the issue but did warn, however, against any pure and simple vote against it: “If we vote against, we will also be voting against social progress”. Voting along the lines of the different national delegations should not be ruled out either. (MD/transl.fl)