Frassoni (Verts/ALE). – (IT) Mr President, Mr Haarder has described the tragedy of the Prestige as scandalous. The Commissioner, Mrs de Palacio, has said it was an unnecessary incident which could have been avoided. This means that both the Presidency of the Council and the Commission and even Mr Galeote feel that there is blame to be apportioned. This is why we are calling for Parliament to set up a committee of inquiry with the task of identifying where the different responsibilities for the incident and for the subsequent salvage and emergency operations lie, particularly where the Spanish Government is concerned, which, I would remind you, was amongst those who firmly supported the rejection and weakening of the ‘Erika package’ and which is now calling in major building and construction firms to clean up the beaches. We condemn the fact that the Council has only adopted part of the Commission’s proposals. Here, we would like to pay tribute to the Belgian Minister – who, moreover, is one of the few remaining Greens – who was one of the very few people to support the package proposed by the Commission and to fight for it to be adopted in its entirety.

The European Union needs its own legislative framework because we are absolutely sure that the international community will not be able to produce adequate legislation. We feel that there are two supplementary measures which need to be taken in addition to those already adopted. Firstly, the port state control bodies must carry out inspections on at least 25% of the ships entering each of the ports of the individual Member States rather than an average calculation being carried out at national level. Secondly, there must be new standards ensuring that dangerous substances are transported in smaller container ships than at present with a maximum capacity of 10 000 tonnes. Moreover, we feel that the Commission proposal for a directive on environmental liability must also include marine pollution and that, in the event of oil spillage, the European Union must adopt the same financial responsibility system as that already applied in the United States, where ship owners have unlimited financial responsibility if blame for the incident can be attributed to them.

Lastly, Mr President, the European Union must provide sufficient financial support through the Structural Funds and through the Solidarity Fund to meet the needs of Galicia and northern Spain and help them to recover from this disaster. Moreover, we must on no account disregard the fact that many Nature 2000 areas are affected by this disaster.