Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-17-Speech-3-328"
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"en.20010117.11.3-328"2
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".
Mr President, I would firstly like to thank Mr Costa for his magnificent report and all the speakers for participating in this debate. I am happy to be able to say that the Commission has received the report and its conclusions with great satisfaction. I am aware of the great amount of work and the enormous effort that the rapporteur, Mr Costa, has put in to trying to achieve the greatest possible consensus, and for which he has been praised by Mr Jarzembowski and other speakers. I would like to say that, with regard to such a sensitive and thorny issue as charging for infrastructures, it is a great achievement – and I stress this – to have almost squared the circle, because it is really difficult to reach a consensus on a proposal such as this.
This report is based on a series of seminars with the members of the Commission’s own high level group on charging for infrastructures and on an information conference on best practice in charging for infrastructures. By this I mean that this is a well-worked, well-informed and studied document and we owe that firstly to Mr Costa and to the other speakers who have shown their great interest in such a thorny and difficult issue. The report is therefore well-worked and makes a solid contribution to the understanding of the policy of charging for infrastructures as well as its application, a key issue in the orientation of transport policy and in making progress with a policy which guarantees lasting transport and mobility for the future and in dealing in a rational way with the extraordinary demand to which we are going to have to find a solution in the years to come.
The report also coincides with the Commission’s policy on charging for transport infrastructures. The Commission believes that the lack of coordination in fiscal policies, the lack of coordination in Member States’ charging, hinders the efficiency of transport operations and restricts the development of the single market and economic integration. Whatever the treatment of the different means of transport, it imposes real costs on European companies and on society in general.
Consequently, the Commission has proposed the gradual implementation – and I am sorry that Mr Izquierdo has left, because he has not seen that not only has Mr Costa accepted that amendment, but that the Commission is happy that he has – of a harmonised framework for charging for infrastructures in the European Union which is applicable to all means of transport. The Commission’s policy of charging for infrastructures provides a framework for the reform of charges and taxes on transport, with a view to reflecting environmental costs, infrastructure costs and the cost of managing demand for transport.
Progress has been made, as in the case of the approval in December of the measures on railway infrastructures through the conciliation procedure. A great deal, however, remains to be done. I am therefore pleased to be able to assure Parliament that the concerns highlighted in the report in relation to charging for infrastructures will be taken fully into account in the next Commission White Paper on the common transport policy, which I referred to previously and which, although somewhat later than the dates initially envisaged, will enable us to make progress in solving one the most complex problems of that transport policy: charging for infrastructures. All of that will be possible thanks to the magnificent work of the Members of this Parliament and Mr Costa in particular."@en1
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