Speeches - Dr. Georg Jarzembowski

The dominant principle of European transport policy for the European Union is the goal of "sustainable mobility". The politicians responsible should harmonise the desire of business and the public for mobility with the public’s desire for sensible environmental protection.

To achieve this aim, the European Union and thus the European Parliament are in the process of redrafting the principles for the use of innovative technology in the following areas:

Deregulation of the railway market

The preparations for the conciliation procedure between Parliament and the Council are currently underway for the so-called "railway package" which is scheduled for completion by the end of the year and has as its primary objective the deregulation of national railway networks for cross-border freight transport.

One of the European Parliament’s targets in the conciliation procedure is to ensure that, after a transitional period, it is not only the so-called "TransEuropean Transport Network" but all national networks that should be opened up for freight services. Furthermore, we wish to see this liberalisation extended not just to international transport but also to national freight handling by train operating companies.

It is our contention that liberalisation of the railway sector in this way will halt the downward trend of freight transport by rail, and that more goods will be moved from road to rail. This is urgently required, firstly in order to counteract the threat of gridlock on Europe’s trunk roads, and secondly to prove that politicians are giving the rail sector a genuine chance. With "best practices" in mind, train operating companies together with haulage and logistics companies will be challenged to exploit the new opportunities in the railway sector.

New thoughts on levying infrastructure charges

In the Transport select committee of the European Parliament we are currently discussing the interim results of a high-level working party which is looking into redefining infrastructure charging, based on a report by our Italian colleague Paolo Costa.

My parliamentary party regards the concept of "marginal social costs" proposed by the previous socialist Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock as unsuitable. The first task is to charge the actual route costs, i.e. the construction, maintenance and upgrading costs, to the relevant traffic carriers. We reject the notion of charging on external costs in a blanket fashion since it would be unfair, for example, to burden freight companies with congestion costs which on the one hand arise from a failure by the state to upgrade the route network and on the other hand are already resulting in higher staffing and diesel costs. We are therefore thinking more of a concept of "use-oriented infrastructure charges".

In all these considerations, it is essential to bear in mind that any new infrastructure charging proposals must take account, firstly, of the fact that transport companies are already paying general taxes which, of course, also have to be used to finance traffic infrastructure networks and, secondly, that the companies are already paying vehicle and fuel duty plus road use tolls on top.

In any redesign of infrastructure charging it is also essential that due account be given to ensuring that distortion of competition is eliminated rather than exacerbated by different national regulations. To this end the European Parliament will carefully examine the different responses of the national governments to the various blockades of the last few weeks as it would be unacceptable if new distortion of competition were to arise from them.

With regard to the introduction of route-specific road charging, which in my view has more disadvantages than advantages because of the new system costs, but which appears to have been accepted by the industry, there is an imperative within the European Union to prevent, on the one hand, incompatible national systems from being developed and, on the other hand, to ensure the development and implementation of uniform standards.

The EPP parliamentary party is confident that Loyola de Palacio, the new conservative Vice-President with responsibility for transport policy, remains open to proposals and advice from the transport industry before submitting her final restructuring plan for infrastructure charging.

Continued development of TransEuropean Networks

The European Commission will submit a re-examination of the decision of the Parliament and Council on the TransEuropean Network within the next few months. At the same time the European Commission is engaged in preparatory negotiations with Central and Eastern European countries on upgrading measures for the European trunk routes there. As a result of the TINA programme (Transport Infrastructure Needs Assessment) upgrading measures in these countries can now be supported from the ISPA fund (Instrument for Structural Policies for Pre-Accession). What we expect of those countries seeking accession is that they commit a comparable proportion of their tax revenues to repairing and upgrading their rail and trunk road networks in particular.

Within the European Union the emphasis in the review of the TEN network should be on drawing up and completing the fourteen priority projects. For the European Parliament the upgrading of the Brenner rail tunnel is of crucial importance since this is the only means of eliminating the bottleneck in trans-Alpine traffic. We are calling for a concrete, quadripartite agreement between Germany, Austria, Italy and the European Union for the construction and financing of this project. The countries in question must finally accept their responsibility for the provision of an adequate infrastructure.

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