Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-11-Speech-2-271"
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"en.20030211.11.2-271"2
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"Mr President, Madam Vice-President of the Commission, firstly my sincere thanks go to the Vice-President for the White Paper that she has written with her colleagues. I believe that the approach to European transport policy that is advocated in the White Paper is a good one, namely of working on the supply side to restore the balance between the transport modes by 2010.
Commissioner, I would ask you also to do all you can now to encourage the Greek Presidency to put the second railway package on the Council's agenda and to reach a common position, because railway policy is one of the core components of your White Paper and if we do not make progress here we can forget the whole idea, that you have stated in the paper, of getting more freight and passengers back onto rail. This is a genuine fear if the large States get together and simply say: we do not want to open up the markets; we do not want to modernise the railway structures.
I hope that you will tell us how likely you think it is that we will still be able to conclude the second railway package in this legislative period. Because if we do not manage to do so in this parliament then the question is whether we will manage to do so in 2005, 2006 or 2007; if we do not then it will undermine the entire objective of your White Paper, namely to restore the balance between transport modes by 2010.
I now turn to our excellent rapporteur to say that my friends and I will in any case have to reject two points, the first being paragraph 66 on setting up a road safety agency. Mr Izquierdo Collado, Commissioner de Palacio has rightly stated in her White Paper that we do not want to have any legislation on road safety in the next five years. We want to take best practice and see how we can reduce the number of deaths on the roads and achieve higher levels of road safety on this basis. If there is no European legislation, what do we need a new road safety agency for? I would suggest that we should ensure that the maritime agency, the air safety agency and the railway agency do their jobs properly. But let us not have yet another agency!
I must say to the rapporteur that I cannot support paragraph 79, which advocates the setting up of another new transport fund, either. I say to previous speakers: it is your region and your Member State that will have to improve local public transport in your cities. We cannot spend European funds on tasks that are the responsibility of the Member States. We need the resources that we have for the trans-European networks. As it is we have too few resources here. If you take a look at what we have achieved with the Essen projects, which we agreed together in 1996, you will see that not even all 14 projects have been implemented, and we do not have enough money for them.
We already have the Cohesion Fund, the regional fund and the ISPA fund. Ladies and gentlemen, let us not have yet another European transport fund! We need to support the trans-European networks and leave the rest to the Member States."@en1
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