Gabriele Albertini, rapporteur. – (IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, having listened carefully to the debate and to Mr Swoboda and Mr Tajani, as well as my fellow Members, I feel I have all the more reason to extend my thanks for the help and valuable advice I have received in this House.

I do not have time to analyse and comment on the individual suggestions and facets of such a wide-ranging debate, rather, since I must sum up in the few seconds that remain of my speaking time, I will use two adjectives to encapsulate and bring together your thoughts and suggestions. As far as can be expected with such a complex regulation, you have deemed the work carried out to be reasonable.

This regulation takes account of the aims of extending passenger rights and granting the same conditions of protection for all modes of transport, while at the same time considering the specific nature of a number of smaller carriers that have difficulty in adapting to higher requirements at a time of economic crisis, hence my first adjective is ‘reasonable’.

Then there is an idea of perfectibility, or room for improvement, which has been alluded to by Members who, although sympathetic to the circumstances to which we have adapted, want the area of rights to be further expanded, to cover urban transport and to protect passengers with reduced mobility. So then, we are on a journey towards perfection; human affairs are yet to be perfected, and this regulation, which is ‘reasonable’ and, I think, well drafted, is also ‘perfectible’.

The rapporteur does not deny Member States the option of enlarging or extending the scheme to include urban transport, and it is already mandatory for regional transport. The level of coverage has already been outlined, and often approximates that of transnational or national journeys; and the same goes, of course, for the technologies used and the application of the scheme to people with disabilities.

To conclude, I would like to thank you all again, and I hope that today’s work is not the end of the story, but that we may be able to achieve even greater goals.