Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-03-10-Speech-1-141"
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"Madam President, I thank Mr Albertini for his excellent report. Obviously there must be a broad consensus between Parliament, the Council and the Commission on the need to reduce the environmental and energy impacts of transport. At the same time, though, we need to maintain the mobility that is essential to our competitiveness and our quality of life.
Initiatives are planned to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions in the aviation sector and noise around airports. We are also working on shipping measures. Obviously urban transport will also need to be involved: 40% of CO
emissions and 70% of other polluting emissions come from vehicles in towns.
Within the European Parliament, I am very grateful to Mr Rack, who is working on this, and I hope that this autumn we shall be able to produce a set of instruments that towns can use.
These are a few examples of wide-ranging action which is, it must be said, one of the main priorities in my term of office: greening transport, whilst at the same time ensuring that all the citizens of Europe have access to transport.
It is true that, as Mr Albertini has said, his report comes at just the right moment. Parliament and the Commission are more or less in agreement on sustainable mobility and I should like to thank Parliament and Mr Albertini for this excellent work, which also does a great deal to clarify our own work in the Commission.
How can we achieve this sustainable mobility? It is an enormous challenge. By 2020, we have to have cut greenhouse emissions by 20%, reduced energy consumption by 20% and increased the renewable energy in our energy consumption by 20%. Obviously transport will need to play a large part in the attainment of those targets.
I shall start by trying to outline our various initiatives in this area. The development of the Trans-European Networks, in which, as Mr Albertini has just pointed out, we are banking on the development of railways, brings about a modal shift which obviously leads in that direction. We have the TEN-T project and the Marco Polo programme in support of highways of the sea. We are supporting inland waterway transport with the NAIADES programme. Obviously research will also enable us to develop greener and more effective technologies. I would also draw your attention to the recent proposal for a clean vehicles directive, on which the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety will be starting work.
To provide a clear picture of all these measures, the Commission will be presenting an inventory of all European initiatives. This will take stock of all the action taken and draw lessons from it for the future. I have a very particular personal interest in this inventory.
Secondly, we are moving towards a strategy for internalising external costs for all modes of transport. The package I shall be presenting in June will contain an external costs internalisation strategy for all modes of transport, something for which the European Parliament has been pressing. This initiative meets a need. The external costs for our economy and our environment – air pollution, noise, congestion – are heavy, which also has an adverse effect on transport mobility. If we want sustainable mobility, we have to make sure that the external transport costs are integrated into what users pay. Our 2006 proposal that aviation should be included in the European emission duties exchange system was a step towards the internalisation of external costs in the aviation sector.
I intend to couple this internalisation strategy with a proposal for amendment of the directive on charges for heavy goods vehicles. That will allow Member States – allow, not oblige – to include external environment costs in tolls if they wish, and not just infrastructure costs, as is the case currently. At present they cannot do so, except in a very few cases. This amendment will allow internalisation of external costs in another sector, railways. The Community legislation provides that external costs for the railways can only be internalised if the other modes of transport also internalise their external costs.
In short, we are moving towards intelligent tolls, educational tolls, which will make it possible to penalise more heavily the lorries that have the lowest environmental standards or use major routes at times when congestion and traffic jams are at their worst.
In addition to that, we shall be taking a series of initiatives in the second half of the year. I shall be making an announcement on measures to reduce railway noise. There will be improvements on the roads, too; it will be possible to reduce congestion with an intelligent transport system. We shall be aiming at one-box interoperability. That will be helpful in organising the logistical rules at European level.
The Albertini report also stresses the need to establish a real Single European Sky. Mr Albertini is right, that is the proper way. Also, as has been said earlier, we really have to make progress on the CESAR project. It must play an essential part in developing the technology required for the attainment of that goal."@en1
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