Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-24-Speech-3-266"
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"en.20030924.7.3-266"2
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"Madam President, we are today discussing the trans-European networks, and it is unfortunate that we are doing so in the absence of the Commission and of the Council. When we look carefully at matters, the fact is that, according to the calculations, the European Union is foregoing half a percentage point per year in economic growth because, for example, the infrastructure is insufficiently developed and not functioning efficiently. If, moreover, we were to achieve – as is probable – an improvement of between 25% and 50% in our air quality – at least in quite a few areas – we should be setting our sights more firmly upon combined transport, that is to say on a combination of rail, road and water.
When the European Union has set itself two important objectives – the first in Lisbon, concerning the competitiveness of our continent, and the second, which has since been insufficiently implemented, in Gothenburg, concerning the sustainability of economic development on our continent – it is rather strange that there are already many contradictions in transport policy, in terms of many very different investments and trends, and of the fact that – although we hope this will soon happen – roads are, to some extent, still not paying their way in the light, for example, of the Road Costs Directive.
I hope that the Commission will soon examine the proposals of the committee chaired by Mr van Miert and will present this Parliament with a practical proposal as to how, in the future, the trans-European networks should be developed. What is first of all necessary is a list of priorities and, secondly of course, the funding. Mr Goebbels and others have already referred to this.
Credit financing alone will not suffice. Nor is it enough to organise private capital, something that is also incredibly difficult to do. What we see in the case of many projects – and Commissioner Kinnock has already submitted proposals in this respect and set up his own group of experts – is that, in actual practice, a private-public partnership really only works in the case of a few such projects if nothing is also done to increase public investment. In my view, it should really be considered whether, for example, there is the possibility, in the case of carefully targeted cross-border projects that are priorities specifically in terms of European cohesion, of permitting quite specific exemptions from the deficit
Maastricht. The Presidency’s proposals on this subject were very problematic because they were couched in too general terms, and I believe we must give them more specific wordings. The Commission and the Council should now be called upon finally to reach decisions and genuinely to propose a realistic funding concept."@en1
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"calculation à la"1
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