The Committee adopted the report of mr. Dieter-Leberecht KOCH (D, EPP) on the Commission proposal for a Council directive on statistical returns in respect of carriage of goods and passengers by sea. The proposed measure is aimed at the collection of regular, comparable and reliable data on the carriage of goods and passengers by sea. These statistics are required for the drawing up, monitoring and assessment of the common maritime transport policy and will be made available to those responsible in the EU institutions and governments. Unlike the situation in respect of the carriage of goods by land, there is no harmonized and useful information from the Member States about sea transport.
The directive does not apply to fish-catching vessels, fish-processing vessels, naval vessels or vessels used by public administration and public services. the statistics to be provided concern the ship, its cargo and its passengers. Rapporteur KOCH welcomes the proposal which will facilitate the first reliable collection of data at EU level. He saw most of his amendments carried, which were designed to make the text clearer and more complete.
In future, the Commission will draw up a list of ports coded and classified to countries and maritime coastal areas. On the basis of that list, each Member State shall forward to the Statistical Office of the EU detailed information on those ports on its territory which cover at least 90% of the annual gross tonnage of all sea transport of goods and 90% of all annual movements of passengers. Any port handling annually more than 1 million tonnes of goods or recording more than 200.000 passenger movements shall be automatically selected. For the ports not selected, summary data are to be provided. The first data transmission is scheduled for the first quarter of 1996.
�