Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-07-08-Speech-2-500"
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"en.20080708.41.2-500"2
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"Madam President, last autumn the Commission presented a Green Paper entitled ‘Towards a new culture of urban mobility’ and it plans to submit an action plan containing specific measures in a few months’ time.
Mr Cramer will cycle, Mr Marinescu will go home on a new high-speed train, Mr Costa will use the vaporetto, Vice-President Tajani will travel by scooter in Rome and I like to travel on foot in my home town. If we do all those things, we will indeed bring about a small but not insignificant improvement.
I will conclude by thanking the two Commissioners who have considered this issue in depth here, Vice-President Jacques Barrot and Vice-President Antonio Tajani, who is now the Commissioner responsible. I thank the shadow rapporteurs who also worked on this report and the colleagues who helped bring about a good result in committee. Let me also thank my colleagues in the committee, in my group and in my own office for their work. I hope it will produce a further good result.
The European Parliament felt it had a duty and responsibility as co-legislator for future measures and as a budgetary power to state its position on this Green Paper in good time. We approached the subject confidently and carefully: confidently in the sense that we want to say where the European Parliament believes this road should take us, and carefully because we do not want to question the Commission’s right of initiative but will await its detailed proposals.
There was broad consensus on this subject during the discussions in the Committee on Transport. I want briefly to address a few important questions.
A key theme that rightly concerned many colleagues was subsidiarity. They asked who should be a player in this regard and whether it was a matter for Europe in the first place and felt that perhaps we should not get too carried in making decisions, and so forth.
Our answer would be this: we are assuming that the presentation of this Green Paper followed by the action plan will not affect the existing delineation of areas of responsibility in Europe but that all the competent players, the European Union, the Member States and the regional and local authorities, will make use of their competences and, crucially, coordinate them sensibly among themselves. In that respect, we would like to see an integrated overall concept and to see urban decisions on what is in fact right and important for the individual municipalities.
Another issue is to ensure that transport matches people’s needs. We should not mislead European citizens in the European internal transport market. If there is a green zone in one town and another green zone in the next town, that should not mean they face a new world simply by crossing a local authority border. We expect European harmonisation here and we expect Europe to set out best practices.
A third issue is accompanying measures. We held a hearing at which mayors complained that they often receive instructions from Europe and then, when it comes to implementing them, find that the Member States have left them out in the cold or, to be more precise, left them without funds to implement those European measures.
We want to pay special attention to passengers with disabilities. In my view, and as I keep repeating, that also applies to men and women with small children. They do not have a very easy time on public transport or transport in general.
We want to send out messages in and to the industry in good time, urging it to develop better logistics and new technologies. Most importantly, we want to raise awareness among the people. They themselves must help to ensure that we really can achieve a healthy environment through the transport system."@en1
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