Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-17-Speech-3-315"
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"en.20010117.11.3-315"2
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".
Mr President, Vice-President of the Commission, Mr Costa, ladies and gentlemen, I want to give high praise to the rapporteur for his success in achieving a broad consensus with his report, after we have spent years in this House hotly debating the right way to charge for transport infrastructure costs.
Commissioner, Vice-President, I hope that after the vote tomorrow you will peruse all the drafts for the White Paper on transport policy again and check whether they follow the same lines as proposed by this House. After all, normally the Commission's proposals always take account of the Member States' views, and perhaps in future they will also take more account of Parliament's views.
I believe that the Costa report offers an opportunity to re-think some of the habits the various departments have grown so fond of. I also hope that we do not mix up the subject matter of the White Paper with the subject of the trans-European networks. We are about to review the trans-European networks; these are both important subjects. To present them to Parliament as a single package would, in my view, be extremely unwise since they are in fact separate subjects.
Allow me to make just a few comments on the Costa report. Amendment No 1 makes it quite clear that we want use-based transport charging, which can be verified on the basis of the construction, expansion and improvement costs. That is the first issue. So there are two aims of which we must not lose sight when we harmonise these transport infrastructure charges.
Firstly, we must finally achieve a single market in this area. For when you think that we still have enormous distortions of competition because of divergent fiscal and other charges between the Member States, a whole 8-9 years after the completion of the single market on 31 December 1992, then the question of equal competition is bound to arise.
Secondly, we really all think that after the meteoric rises in oil prices over the past year, in whatever way we want to convert and achieve a more fair and environmentally compatible system, the total charge for undertakings must not rise. We do not want any forcing up of prices.
Last point: in relation to external costs I have two requests. Firstly, about three years ago, Parliament decided
to work out on a scientific basis what the external costs actually are. How can they be calculated and how can they be charged? We never received that report. Secondly, we must differentiate when we calculate these external costs. To give just one example: congestion costs. It would be absurd to charge an undertaking for the fact that the drivers are stuck in a tail-back because the Member States have not expanded the roads, so that the undertaking not only has higher petrol and working costs but also has to pay additional charges to the Member State responsible for the congestion."@en1
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