Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-27-Speech-2-296"
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"en.20050927.22.2-296"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, other colleagues from my group will be taking the floor in this debate, in particular my colleague Erik Meijer. For my part, I will confine my contribution to explaining the thinking behind our amendment rejecting the proposal for a directive inappropriately entitled, ‘the development of the Community’s railways’.
We wholeheartedly believe that it is high time to overhaul the organisation of the transport sector on our continent. This should be done in accordance with the criteria that our fellow citizens value: safety, the environment, social and territorial cohesion, the public service, and their corollary, high standards of harmonised social regulation for the workers concerned. The sector’s unions have some very carefully worked out proposals on all of these aspects. They should be our natural partners when planning and implementing this kind of project. In this context, the aspiration to achieve a more balanced use of rail – and, moreover, inland waterways – is in every respect legitimate and Europe is of course a relevant arena in which to address these issues.
The question is as follows: what is there to say that achieving such objectives should at all costs require all-out liberalisation of the rail transport sector? This would at the very least merit a serious evaluation of the various different experiences with this model so far and the initial impact of opening up to competition before any new measures are taken. That is moreover what Parliament explicitly demanded when the first railway package was adopted. This express request has never been met. Why not?
For example, not a word has been said about the disastrous consequences of rail privatisation in the United Kingdom. You pass very swiftly, Mr Barrot, over the fact that the first private train in France, owned by Connex, is not carrying any additional traffic, but is happy to occupy a place held until now by the public company SNCF. Neither is any mention made of the decline in the diversity of services offered in the freight transport sector, or of the fact that passenger routes that are deemed to be unprofitable have been abandoned with a view to the opening up to competition. What is more, there is barely a murmur about projects which have a real chance of improving European transport, such as the Lyon-Turin link, being blocked. No! We liberalise and that is all there is to it.
It is this dogmatism of ‘markets everywhere’ that our group is protesting against. We do so in a bid to reiterate the demand for a public and pluralist assessment of the experiences so far and to express our preferred choice of cooperation and not competition in the rail transport sector in Europe. Our group calls on all of our Members to vote in favour of Amendment 14, which rejects the proposal for a directive on the liberalisation of rail transport."@en1
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