Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-27-Speech-2-291"
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"en.20050927.22.2-291"2
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".
Mr President, Mr Barrot, ladies and gentlemen, in submitting to Parliament a draft regulation on compensation in cases of non-compliance with contractual quality requirements for rail services, the aim of the European Commission was to improve the quality of rail freight transport in the European Union’s internal market and thus to promote a shift of freight transport from road to rail. The intention was to increase, by this means, the proportion of freight transported by rail, which is currently very low.
Basically, the draft regulation contains administrative measures and rules which are to be worked into contracts between rail companies and their customers. I should say right away that in competitive situations such a measure would not be conceivable, hence to a great extent the opinion of the Committee on Transport and Tourism on whether to support this regulation was based on either optimism or scepticism concerning increased competition in rail freight transport in the near future. In addition, as a representative of a new Member State, I was unpleasantly surprised by the fact that the draft regulation submitted in the spring of 2004 was based on research relating only to the 15 older Member States, and that a whole series of special features of the new Member States was not taken into account in the draft; these can be mentioned only by way of example. For instance, in the Baltic States over 50% of freight transport is by rail, as compared with almost 90% by road in other states. Secondly, in the three Baltic States almost all transportation of rail freight crosses European Union external borders connecting the sea ports of the Baltic States with the markets of Russia, Belarus and other CIS states. This, in turn, would mean that if this regulation were to be adopted, Latvia’s railways would constantly be paying compensation for delays occurring on Russian territory without any practical hope of obtaining any compensation from Russian railways.
Leaving aside the above, as rapporteur I hoped to balance the draft text and to find a compromise between extremely diverse interest groups. At least to date, however, there has been no basis for such a compromise, and even after many debates at the Commission the majority of my colleagues on the committee believed that an administrative regulation was not the way to improve the quality of rail transport. I myself have come to various conclusions over this period of time, having become acquainted with the larger rail companies and also with infrastructure managers. I am concerned by the fact that if we do not adopt any measures in the sphere of freight transport shortly, then access to infrastructure will of course become even more of a priority for passengers, which in itself is not a bad thing, but the quality of freight transport will probably fall even further. For me, the most important conclusion from this study was that, clearly, we cannot draw up regulations on the basis of the problems of individual transport corridors without studying the particular features of European Union Member States, and using administrative methods only in places where competition is weak. Such a ‘one size fits all’ approach would clearly create a lack of trust among European Union citizens concerning the legislative plans of the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Council.
Finally, I would like to say that I am very satisfied with the joint work by all the rapporteurs on this package, as well as by the shadow rapporteurs, and I do not understand the attempts to break up this third rail package, which might give practically nothing to customers. I will mention again an example from the Baltic States. If, for example, the idea contained in the report by Mr Sterckx, that passengers should also be given rights in respect of domestic transport, is removed and replaced with international transport only, then I can say that in the countries in my region — in the Baltic States — the entire third package will have no effect at all. The effect of all the three or four legislative acts will be of zero value. I do not want to set out these details, but unfortunately this is the case. I have made a detailed analysis of the possible effect on the Baltic States. Taking into account everything that has been said already, I call on my fellow Members to reject my report, as the Committee on Transport and Tourism has done, and at the same time I call on my fellow Members to support the package approach for the other three pieces of legislation and to support them in the wording approved by the Committee on Transport and Tourism."@en1
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