Editorial 01/06

January 15th, 2006 by JCB
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EDITORIAL

It is a rare pleasure for me to open 2006 with some very good news for pilots. On the 18^th January the EU Ports Directive was finally defeated in the EU Parliament by an overwhelming vote by MEPs of 532 against, 120 for and 25 abstentions.

Although the defeat was a result of many different groups opposing it, the UKMPA through EMPA had undertaken a highly successful lobbying campaign which had played an important role in bringing about this final defeat of the proposed legislation.

Of course, all of this should have been unnecessary since the MEPs had already thrown the directive out before in November 2003 and it is a sad reflection on the democratic process in the EU that following the initial rejection, the Spanish Transport Commissioner, Loyola de Palacio, in a parting gesture of defiance

before she left the Commission, decided to re-present the directive. This resulted in the Commission deciding to ignore the MEP’s vote of rejection and return it to the legislative process. The last two years have therefore seen all the opponents waste much time and resources in re-submitting all their arguments for a second time. Has it gone away for good? Probably not, but the indications are that ports will now be covered by a wider transport directive and it is to be hoped that the lessons of the overwhelming defeat of the Ports Directive will have been noted and the controversial issues of competition in pilotage and self handling will result in these being dropped.  Needless to say, the UKMPA and EMPA are monitoring events very closely.

Remaining in Europe, the other good news is that the ESMARALDA project mentioned in my October 2005 editorial has also been abandoned. The UKMPA are hoping that such good news will be supplemented by a successful resolution of the Belfast dispute, Kristian Pederson’s dismissal appeal and the on-going Humber issue.