The European Parliament approved this proposal for a directive with the following amendments:
- Parliament clarified that the legal basis of this text should include both Article 213 and Article 75;
- the compilation of statistics should result in as little extra burden as possible for respondents;
- the directive should not apply to vessels used for public service purposes;
- respondents were authorised to supply data in accordance with agreements made within the context of the simplification of trade procedures, the ISO, the CEN and international customs regulations;
- the results should no longer be transmitted in the form of data files, as recommended by the Commission;
- the first transmission of data should cover the first quarter of 1996 instead of 1995 as suggested by the Commission. Similarly, the directive should be implemented by the Member States no later than 1 January 1996 and not 1 January 1995;
- every three years the Commission should submit a report to the budgetary authority on the implementation of the directive;
- the EP added "the suspension of the collection of individual data on passenger transport" to the arrangements for implementing the directive laid down by the Commission in consultation with the Statistical Programme Committee;
- modifications were made to the decision-making procedure of the committee assisting the Commission.
In the annexes, Parliament added statistical variables to the list proposed by the Commission (final port of destination of the cargo, port of origin of the cargo, nationality of the ship operator, gross tonnage of the vessels) and amended certain definitions in the annex devoted to this heading (ship operator, nationality of the ship operator, deadweight tonnage). Finally, Parliament added an Annex Va with a list of ports and description of how the Commission should manage this list.
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