Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-13-Speech-2-373"
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"en.20051213.61.2-373"2
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".
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, politics was once defined as the art of the possible. If this definition is true, Parliament has made full use of its possibilities in the face of the widely differing interests in our countries, and also in our parties. We are particularly obliged to the rapporteur for her excellent negotiating skills.
Why is this legislation so fundamentally important to us Social Democrats? It brings about a Europe-wide changeover to a system of transport infrastructure costs and thus to fairer user financing of the infrastructure that is calculated on a uniform basis. Differing toll rates and arbitrariness will now be a thing of the past in Europe. At the same time, the legislation means embarking on the ‘polluter pays’ principle, with which we wish to make progress, including by charging for external costs, by the end of this parliamentary term – as both the Commissioner and the Council have told us. Embarking on a system of traffic management via variable toll rates and the fact that these are to be variable from 2010 is important to us in transport-policy terms. This constitutes a real gain in quality.
Toll mark-ups in sensitive regions can be used for cross-subsidising environmentally friendly modes of transport, and it is also possible to add toll mark-ups in conurbations and charge tolls on parallel and diverted traffic, which is a current problem in Germany in particular.
From 2012, charging tolls on lorries weighing 3.7 tonnes or more will be the rule. The burden of proof for exceptions rests with the Member States, and we have defined these fairly narrowly. I am sure that good transport-policy sense will rule out any exceptions, as the shift in the volume of freight transport to lorries weighing under 12 tonnes in Germany has now resulted in an artificial increase in traffic volume there.
I think that we can support this compromise, which we have all achieved together, as a whole, and I eagerly await the next steps we shall take and the discussions we shall hold together here in Parliament on the internalisation of external costs."@en1
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