Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-12-11-Speech-2-390"
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"en.20071211.40.2-390"2
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"Madam President, Mr Vice-President, you may remember that, in the discussions on the last amendment of the Eurovignette Directive, I was one of those who clamoured insistently for internalisation of the external cost of road haulage operations. Our bid failed. For this reason I am pleased, on the one hand, that we are now heading in that direction.
I am not pleased because I campaigned for this the last time but because I see what has happened in Austria in the brief intervening period. It is no longer merely western Austria that is awash with heavy goods vehicles. We have now reached the point where eastern Austria is congested too, with some of the roads there completely blocked and the area around our capital, around the city of Vienna, already bursting at the seams. For that reason it is high time we finally managed to factor the external cost of HGV operations into the European toll disc.
I appreciate, of course, that this kind of system must be applied to all forms of transport, but we have a set of rules in place for HGVs, so that is where we must now begin; needless to say, we must also go on from there to deal with the other modes of transport. I would add my voice to those of my fellow Members who have asked when we are going to be presented with an actual legislative draft.
The second point I wish to address is that we should perhaps reflect on the fact that this is a problem throughout Europe, and merely prescribing high tolls in parts of certain small countries will serve little purpose. Instead, we ought to come up with a general system. In this context, I wonder whether we should not assess the potential of minimum tolls, at least on trans-European network routes, as a means of adjusting the modal balance throughout Europe."@en1
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