Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-25-Speech-2-338"
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"en.20051025.25.2-338"2
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"Mr President, this would appear to be a popular theme among the Polish Members of the House, and I shall continue the trend. The Commission’s new principles governing the granting of financial aid for the trans-European transport networks are a prime example of price dumping. They are intended to encourage the Member States to take measures that are in the interests of the European Community as a whole.
Put briefly, these interests boil down to two key issues. The first of these is the need to eliminate transport bottlenecks in the old Member States. The second is the need to link the transport systems of the 15 old Member States to those of the 10 new Member States. There is cause for concern, however, that one of these goals will take precedence over the other if the above principles are implemented. By this I mean that there is a better chance of the first goal being achieved than the second. It goes without saying that the reason for this is that the new Member States, in particular those such as Poland, are facing lengthy delays in the development of road infrastructure. As well as finding solutions to the problem of how to link their transport systems to those in Western Europe, these countries are confronted with the challenge of constructing the very systems themselves. One answer could be to allow double Community funding for priority routes. The Commission proposal makes no provision for this possibility, however, since the new principles exclude funding for sections of routes covered by the Cohesion Fund. This could mean that the dumping I mentioned at the start is entirely ineffective. Amendment 22 should be adopted in order to ensure that such funding is not excluded, and I am very much in favour of this amendment.
Of course, the effectiveness of the new financial instrument in the old Member States will also be limited if cuts to the total funding available are made in the budget, and indeed this issue has already been touched upon several times today. Such cuts would be absolutely disastrous, and would render a valuable initiative by the Commission completely meaningless."@en1
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