Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-17-Speech-3-141"
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"en.20031217.5.3-141"2
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".
The message of the statistics is plain, especially where freight traffic across the Alps is concerned. In Switzerland, 66% of freight is transported by rail and 30% by road; in the EU, the proportions are reversed and the difference even more starkly pronounced. What this means is that, politically speaking, the Swiss are doing something that we in Europe, in the European Union, cannot manage to do. They fix the heavy traffic levy at such a level that all external costs are completely internalised, so that the costs of road surfaces, accidents and environmental damage by noise and air pollution are all covered. Of this revenue, 80% is spent on the alternative; on building base tunnels, on measures for protection from railway noise and on improvements to rail services.
In technological matters, too, the Swiss, in little Switzerland, are years ahead of the EU. The Swiss have a system, one that works well, with microwave technology, to be combined in future with digital tachographs. The question is: why can we not manage that in the EU?
The proposal for the Eurovignette again lays down a maximum, one that is so low that nobody can seriously believe that it offers any proper incentive to use rail rather than road; nor, indeed, are the Member States allowed to spend most of this money on the alternative. What this means is that this is a half-hearted policy, and we see its results when we consider the statistics on climate change, accidents and so on.
In much the same way as the German transport ministry, the Commission has allowed itself to be pressed into the service of two big players and wants to force upon us satellite technology that is not yet fully developed. I think that we who sit on the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy, as well as on the other, would be doing well to bring the Commission back a bit nearer to earthbound reality and to demand neutrality in matters of technology.
By way of conclusion, I want to say something about the effect that distorted competition between road and rail has on society. After this House had adopted, after only one reading, Mr Markov’s directive on driving hours and rest periods, Mr Berlusconi and his government did not even think it necessary to put it on the Council’s agenda. That, I think, is quite simply a scandal. How can we in Europe make progress on the social and environmental fronts when such significant directives are not allowed to make progress at Council level?"@en1
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