Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-10-Speech-2-413"
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"en.20090310.34.2-413"2
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"Mr President, Mr Vice-President of the Commission, I would like to start by congratulating my fellow Members, Mr El Khadraoui and Mr Jarzembowski, on the high quality of their work and the excellent reports they have produced.
We are currently at a turning point, where we are trying to safeguard our industry whilst making it more sustainable, and to reach the ‘three times 20’ objective that was reaffirmed by the President of the European Union at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy, in this House last December.
In this context, the European Union has expressed a desire to legislate to take account, in transport costs, of other costs that have, to date, been borne by European society as a whole: this is the polluter pays principle that Parliament has always supported.
We voted for this for air transport last June, when aviation was integrated into the ETS system. In the maritime sector, the European Commission is currently looking into the best way of taking account of discharges from ships, and it is what we are proposing today with this text for the transport of freight by road.
I agree with those of you who have said that we certainly must not restrict mobility. We need to carry on as we have been for a number of years in encouraging this mobility in the European Union, and we need to ensure that there is fair competition between the various modes of transport.
We must not compel businesses at all costs to transport their goods by train or boat instead of by road freight – that would be absurd and anti-economic. What we need to do is make sure that businesses can choose the quickest, most economic and most beneficial mode of transport for their purposes, and for that to be possible, the price has to reflect the real cost of the selected mode of transport.
By giving the States the option of internalising certain external costs if they wish, this directive takes a first step in that direction – a first step towards true integration of the external costs in all modes of transport, which sends a powerful political message. It is important for us to support this when we vote tomorrow."@en1
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