Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-21-Speech-2-023"
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"en.20031021.2.2-023"2
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"Mr President, rail transport was once started by private companies who anticipated making a profit by doing so. Their railway lines did not form a coherent network and were mostly inaccessible to other companies with different kinds of trains. Many of those companies went bankrupt or were notable for their poor-quality, frequently interrupted service. When that system failed, State-owned companies came along, and tried to develop a uniform model for their respective countries as far as possible. Rail transport became a core responsibility of the State. We have now reached a phase in which a large-scale uniform European model is aspired to on the one hand, but at the same time a return to the nineteenth century model of individual private companies is being propagated. Those two aims will probably prove difficult to reconcile in practice, and be a constant source of tension. The champions of this model hold up transport companies that have undergone prolific growth in the free market, such as airlines and HGV companies, as an example to the railways, which they see as outmoded. They believe that freedom of competition will lead to growth and make the railways attractive to a broader clientele that has not been using them up to now.
Others fear that liberalisation will only lead to a separation between profitable and loss-making activities and to cutbacks in infrastructure, service and staff, resulting in a deterioration in safety and a rise in fares. In their view, there are more grounds for entrusting long-distance cross-border transport to effective coordination between the existing State companies or to one individual European company than for making room for new private companies; and measures to restrict environmentally unfriendly air and road transport are a good supplement to that.
The four reports that are on the agenda today are a product of this major difference of opinion. They all have in common that they envisage an important role for rail transport again in the future, too; and that represents progress in relation to the time when the railways were consigned to the museum of nineteenth century curiosities. Opinion differs widely on the means to achieve this, however.
The Jarzembowski report is one of an endless succession of attempts at greater and faster liberalisation, not only for cross-border freight transport, but even for domestic passenger transport. Although I am not a supporter of great power on the part of the Council, I hope that, if a majority in this Parliament supports the rapporteur, the Council will restrict such an attempt this time, too.
The Sterckx report places rather less emphasis on a free market, but takes a fairly centralistic view, such that it leaves insufficient scope for national and regional measures.
The Ainardi and Savary reports are aimed at quality for society, users and staff, and thus have my support."@en1
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