Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-07-03-Speech-2-038"
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"en.20010703.1.2-038"2
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"Mr President, like Mr Jarzembowski, I wish to refer to the transport issue. I read with concern in the conclusions to the Göteborg Summit in particular that the Commission is to proceed with its plans to propose a framework to ensure that "by 2004 the price of using different modes of transport better reflects costs to society". This clearly reflects the principle of infrastructure charging which has been promoted by the Commission since the publication in July 1998 of its White Paper on fair and efficient pricing in transport, subsequently approved in the Costa Neves report, which Parliament approved in January.
These proposals are anything but fair and efficient, especially as far as road transport is concerned. The Commission's own research shows, for example, that the per kilometre cost of running a car in the UK under infrastructure charging would increase by 97% by 2005.
Surely we have learned some lessons from the fuel price protests which brought many Member States to a standstill last autumn. Road users are already being forced to pay through the nose to subsidise other forms of transport, in particular the United Kingdom, and the Commission's proposals will only aggravate this. Despite several years of study and consultation, even the so-called "experts" within this field admit that the science involved in so-called social marginal costing – the process by which these charges are set – is untested and uncertain. Charging people off the road will not encourage the general public to change their travel habits, it will merely provoke widespread dissent and anger. The road user should not be the target of a witch hunt.
Member States should be free to set their own tax regimes and decide their own priorities for infrastructure charging and improvements. I urge every Member of this Parliament to acknowledge the horrendous impact this would have and encourage them to join me in opposing any such proposals every step of the way."@en1
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