Parliament wins fight to investigate Prestige

By Karen Carstens

Date: 30/10/03

AFTER a bitter struggle over such a committee's right to exist, the European Parliament has set up an inquiry to get to the bottom of what went wrong when the Prestige oil tanker sank last year off the Galician coast.

“We have fought for a long time to get this committee set up,”.said Daniel Cohn-Bendit, co-president of the Greens/EFA Group.

At the same time, he attacked the European People's Party, claiming the centre-right EPP “did everything they could to include a reference to Article 193 of the treaty in the mandate.

“This article, which normally only applies to inquiry committees, stipulates that the activities of the Parliament must not interfere with the investigations of the Spanish judiciary,”.Cohn-Bendit explained.

“We believe that this is an attempt to prevent Spanish officials and politicians from being summoned before the Parliamentary committee.”

The 44-strong Temporary Committee on Improving Safety at Sea will conduct an in-depth probe over six months into the November 2002 Prestige catastrophe.

It will also look into other recent marine disasters, such as the December 1999 Erika tanker incident off the coast of France.

The committee's establishment follows a drawn-out battle between MEPs from Spain's governing party, the Partido Popular, which opposed its creation, and those from opposition parties.

“Now we have a chance to get to the truth,”.said Galician Green MEP Camilo Nogueira (Bloque Nacionalista Galego).

“It would be a terrible betrayal of the Galician people for the Partido Popular to make any further attempt to water down the powers of this investigation.”

But the committee's remit should have gone “much further”, he insisted.

Basque Green MEP Josu Ortuondo (Partido Nacionalista Vasco) also said the initiative “certainly does not go as far as we had hoped”.

Compromise terms of reference were drafted by Belgian MEP Dirk Sterckx, author of a Parliamentary report on the Prestige disaster.

He has said the committee should - as a minimum - determine the exact course of events in the accident, but admitted that ongoing legal cases in Spain limited the inquiry's scope.

One of the European Union's main responses to the Prestige incident so far has been the introduction of a new law.

The regulation entered into force on 21 October and bans single-hulled tankers, carrying heavy oil grades, from entering European ports.

The new legislation, however, was immediately attacked by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which cited their “unilateral character and negative repercussions [it will have on] the shipping industry”.

Earlier this year, Jan Dhaene, a Belgian Green, who was among several MEPs to travel to Spain in the wake of the Prestige disaster, said an initial hearing convened as a substitute for an inquiry committee was “not encouraging”.

France's Cohn-Bendit said the group will now strive to “ensure that light is shed on all of the causes and consequences of the Prestige tragedy.

“We will pursue these efforts despite fierce resistance from the Spanish government who appear to be resisting clarification of the facts.”

The Party of European Socialists (PES) also welcomed the move.

“The European Parliament cannot ignore the serious dangers caused by the transport of hydrocarbon-based products,”.said Enrique Barón Crespo, the PES group president. “It must draw the necessary conclusions from the Prestige disaster and ensure that it cannot be repeated.

The European Parliament has set up an inquiry to investigate the sinking of the Prestige oil tanker off the Spanish coast in November 2002.