Brussels, 09/01/2003 (Agence Europe) - Back from a three-day fact finding mission to Galicia, a European parliamentary delegation of the Greens/EFA Group, who took stock of the ecological and human disaster caused by the pollution of the oil-tanker "Prestige", is determined to secure the creation of a parliamentary committee of enquiry on this oil slick. To get a precise idea of the situation, Jan Dhaene (Belgium, Agalev), Marie-Anne Isler Beguin (France) and Inger Schorling (Sweden) met Galician authorities, fishermen, volunteers engaged in cleaning the beaches, MPs, representatives from business circles, as well as representatives of the environmental NGO "Plataforma Nunca Mais". The committee of enquiry that they dearly want will be demanded next week of the presidents of the political groups on the basis of a petition that these MEPs are having circulated to gather a maximum of signatures (157 are required), mainly among the Greens/EFA and European Socialists.
At a press conference on Thursday at the European Parliament, Ms. Isler Beguin referred to an "enormous demand for explanations on the part of the population" to answer their many questions, among which, notably: - what was done at European level after the sinking of the Erika? Why was no lesson learnt from that tragedy? Why was the Prestige on the high sea? Why was it impossible to tow it to shore to avoid the disaster that has spoilt hundreds of kilometres of coastline from Galicia to France?
"Three years after the Erika, none of the measures proposed by the Greens as elements of an answer have been implemented", exclaimed Isle Beguin. Reiterating these proposals, she stipulated: "Other than a committee of enquiry to understand, we want the setting up of a corps of "green helmets" for the organisation of volunteers". She also expressed her indignation at the pollution of special protection areas of the Natura 2000 network, covered by the "Habitats" directive, be it direct pollution by the oil, or indirect by the construction of roads and paths to restore the spoilt beaches. "We shall demand an answer from the European Commission on this", she stated.
Regarding the despair of the people of Galicia, fuelled by the lack of political responsibility on the part of anyone in this disaster, Ms. Dhaene regarded it as urgent to set up a committee of enquiry at European level. Insisting on the need to find way in future to prevent such oil slicks, he pleaded in favour of European high-sea coastguard ships, and for action on the part of the European Agency for Maritime Safety. In a letter sent the same day to the Agency, Jan Dhaene pleaded in favour of the setting up, at European level, of a new system of penalties for ship captains guilty of having committed a serious professional mistake and having ignored warning signals. He stresses that, in the short term, the Agency should act along those lines and haul careless ship captains before the courts, and, in the longer term, "work on a precise system of liability in maritime navigation, and in particular in the case of the transport of hazardous goods". Also concerned by the training of seafarers, the Euro-MP asks the European Agency for Maritime Safety if it could also work out a system of training and licences for ship captains, so as to distinguish them by a European navigation diploma.
Inger Schorling, for her part, spoke of the "anger of NGOs, fishermen and the mayors concerned at the damage suffered by the environment, the population and the economy", and at the "misinformation put out by the central government". According to her, the committee of enquiry is the only way to have an exact idea of what happened. "single-hulled vessels simply need banning", she added.
Carlos Bautista denounced before the press both the attitude of the Spanish Government, which "denied reality", and that of the Spanish Socialist members of the EP, who, he says, "agreed with the European People's Party to have a low-profile debate at the plenary session in December, so as not to delve more deeply into the causes of the problem". The absence of Spanish Socialists MEPs at the vote on the resolution on the subject, he said, provoked the rejection by six votes of an amendments by the Greens calling for a committee of enquiry (see EUROPE of 20 December, p.13).