Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-11-Speech-2-163"
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"en.20030211.7.2-163"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, the proposal before us for our consideration has to do with the extension of the ecopoint system applicable to lorries travelling through Austria. I think it important to emphasise at this point that what it is proposed to extend is a derogation for Austria, a derogation to which Austria has been entitled ever since it joined the EU, to which was attached the condition that Austria was to improve its transport infrastructure in such a way as to have a positive effect on the free exchange of goods guaranteed by the Internal Market. If we are now to discuss the extension of a derogation, it must be clear to us that one does not simply maintain the status quo for another three years, so that the decision we are about to take must envisage the derogation coming to an end by 2006 at the latest.
My electoral district in the southern part of Baden-Württemberg borders on Austria, which is admittedly a very beautiful country, and, being well acquainted with haulage companies' complaints about the incomprehensibility of the ecopoint system, I agree with my group that the prevailing system has to be changed, and changed in the following respects. The first thing I want to say is that derogations are justified in the Alps, which are a sensitive region. The ecopoint system should therefore apply only, as was originally intended, to transit through the Alps and not also to journeys in the rest of Austria; the alternative would be that the ecopoint system would constitute an arbitrary measure, and other Member States would be able to claim the right to impose their own. Secondly, the system of ecopoints must definitely come to an end in 2006. Thirdly, the state of technological development means that HGVs in emission categories 3 and 4 should lose their ecopoint liability altogether.
In addition, I demand, specifically for what I will call ‘Hörbrenz-Transit’, which particularly affects my electoral district – that is, traffic passing over a connecting stretch, only 16 kilometres long, between the German A 96 and the Swiss A 14 – special treatment in the form of the provision of an adequate number of ecopoints."@en1
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