Loyola de Palacio dies
(Via Fairplay.co.uk)
MADRID 14 December – Loyola de Palacio, the Spanish minister who served as deputy president of the European Commission and transport commissioner between 1999 and 2004, died in Madrid yesterday. She was 56 and had been suffering from cancer. De Palacio will be remembered as strong, determined and committed to European values. She was rarely shifted from her course of action and was often described as “implacable”. In October 2003 she scolded EU member states for lacking the political will to find solutions to deal with maritime disasters, and warned that she was considering legal action against governments whose response to the requirement to implement safety legislation had been apathetic. That came after she had driven through a proposal to make maritime pollution a criminal offence on the grounds that the existing civil liability regime for pollution by ships “do not provide sufficient financial disincentives to ship owners … to behave in the most responsible way.” Her hard-line views on the imprisonment of Prestige captain Apostolos Mangouras won her few friends in shipping circles, while her port reform initiative was viewed by insiders in Brussels as a something of a “personal mission”. The determination to bring in unprecedented levels of regulation was handed on to her successor, Jacques Barrot, at the end of 2004.
MADRID 14 December – Loyola de Palacio, the Spanish minister who served as deputy president of the European Commission and transport commissioner between 1999 and 2004, died in Madrid yesterday. She was 56 and had been suffering from cancer. De Palacio will be remembered as strong, determined and committed to European values. She was rarely shifted from her course of action and was often described as “implacable”. In October 2003 she scolded EU member states for lacking the political will to find solutions to deal with maritime disasters, and warned that she was considering legal action against governments whose response to the requirement to implement safety legislation had been apathetic. That came after she had driven through a proposal to make maritime pollution a criminal offence on the grounds that the existing civil liability regime for pollution by ships “do not provide sufficient financial disincentives to ship owners … to behave in the most responsible way.” Her hard-line views on the imprisonment of Prestige captain Apostolos Mangouras won her few friends in shipping circles, while her port reform initiative was viewed by insiders in Brussels as a something of a “personal mission”. The determination to bring in unprecedented levels of regulation was handed on to her successor, Jacques Barrot, at the end of 2004.
Etiquetas: international maritime affairs, spain
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on viernes, diciembre 15, 2006 at 7:43 a. m..
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