Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-24-Speech-2-268"
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"en.20020924.11.2-268"2
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". – Mr President, I would like to thank the Parliament for its excellent work on the Commission proposal as shown in the report of the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism and the opinion of the Committee on Budgets.
The Commission must also reject Amendment 10 and part of Amendment 17 aiming at including road transport actions in the programme. This is against the modal shift nature of the programme and may render it unmanageable. As for the second part of Amendment 28, modal shift between non-road modes is not within the scope of the programme because it would lead to unacceptable distortions of competition and does not focus on the main overall programme objective.
Moreover, the concentration on maritime transport as such, as proposed in Amendment 16, would narrow down the 'regional motorways of the seas' wording, since the latter includes inland waterways. We cannot accept the reduction of the central steering role of the Commission in complex logistical projects as proposed by Amendment 18.
The detailed financial rules requested by Amendments 25, 26 and 31 seem superfluous as general financial instruments provide for enough control and monitoring.
Finally, the Commission cannot support part of Amendments 2 and 28, referring to the formation of a common political will in cross-border transport projects as political decision-makers are not targeted by the programme.
I am delighted that both the Commission and the Parliament share largely the same vision on how to actively promote sustainable transport.
In particular, I am happy to see that the Parliament supports the Commission with regard to the overall budgetary envelope of the programme. You surely know that this is a matter of discussion in the Council. The Council may propose a lowering of the amount. This would risk rejecting a disproportionate number of good proposals and endangering the very goal of Marco Polo.
Coming to the proposed amendments, you will not be surprised to hear that the Commission can accept a large number of them, possibly with redrafting or even unchanged in so far as they improve or clarify the Commission's texts.
However, there are some amendments which, in our view, would not be conducive to the overall goals and management of the programme. The Commission rejects these amendments or parts of them.
Let me briefly explain the position. Amendments 14, 15, 21 and 24 aiming at lowering the contract thresholds will not help us to generate projects which by their size are of real European added value. We need fewer but larger projects with real impact. This will also help the Commission to manage the Marco Polo programme effectively.
I agree with the concerns of some Members of the Parliament regarding the role and participation of small and medium-sized enterprise, but in fact SMEs do have the opportunity to join trans-national consortia in which any kind of companies can participate.
The Commission also has a problem with bringing forward the date of its report on the implementation of the programme, as proposed by Amendments 3 and 27. While I understand the concerns of the Parliament, the date proposed will not give us enough time to gain experience with the programme.
Using the term inter-modal action as proposed in Amendments 8, 9, 12 and 28 may carry the risk that we narrow the scope of Marco Polo and exclude important segments of the freight transport sector such as bulk and conventional traffic, which are not inter-modal."@en1
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