Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-24-Speech-3-268"
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"en.20030924.7.3-268"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, it is true that we were to have a discussion with the Council, but, as we are quite aware, we are partly to blame, for we extended our previous work. The fact remains – and I, too, agree with the Members who have made this point – that it is a pity that this opportunity cannot be fully exploited. There is not much point in holding the debate if the Commission and the Council are not here, but let us, at least, use it to discuss the matter amongst ourselves; in any case, there are very few of us left in the Chamber.
Before I go any further, I would say to Mrs Frassoni that I, too, am concerned that sustainability should be placed at the heart of the project and that it should, so to speak, be one of the screening criteria for what we want to do. However, I am much more concerned at the unsustainable nature of the present situation.
As the Socialist Member, Mr Goebbels, said – I do not know if you heard him, Madam President – in actual fact, our citizens are already playing an enormous price in terms of quality of life and quality of the environment now, precisely because of the situation in our continent of malfunctions, traffic jams, traffic overloads and the impossibility of smooth traffic flow.
That said, however, I, too, believe that, at this juncture, we, too, as Parliament, should launch an ‘Operation truth’ if we do not want the Van Miert report to be just another pipe dream or set of low priorities, for when we start to call priorities 10, 20 or 25 projects involving, as we all know, such huge costs, the likelihood is that none of the projects on our list are actually going to be treated as a priority.
I am sure Parliament is capable of carrying out this ‘Operation truth’, starting by making people shoulder their responsibilities and by asking ourselves, if we want a European transport policy and if we want a large-scale infrastructure policy, what price we are prepared to pay for this policy and, in particular, which choices we are prepared to make. Otherwise, we will continue to hold virtually useless debates like this and, above all, we will continue to raise the expectations of our citizens and of some of our political leaders too, and it would and will be more damaging to fail to meet those expectations than to fail to implement a project.
I therefore feel that, while we are waiting for the Commission and, above all, the Council, to explain to us what the actual possibilities are behind the intentions expressed so clearly by the Italian Presidency at the start of its mandate, we can start to lay down this challenge. If we are to do it, let us get on with it, but we must do it properly and sit down round a table to work out what it is actually possible to achieve."@en1
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