Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-04-22-Speech-3-513"
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"en.20090422.62.3-513"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, the displacement of freight from road to rail and internal waterways or short sea shipping is a slow burner in our transport debates and has been for decades. Now, in the context of the climate debate, this debate has naturally taken on new importance.
In the meantime, we have arrived at this shift via various political approaches and instruments. However, if we look at it carefully, traffic is very difficult to shift in practice and this is only achieved in very rare cases.
Firstly, because connections between the modes of transport are still not sufficiently harmonised; secondly, because rail and inland waterways are still not sufficiently established as European service providers, and thirdly, because the environmentally-friendly forms of transport obviously cannot essentially provide a door-to-door service.
All these difficulties are being further exacerbated in the present recession by plummeting prices in road freight transport. Marco Polo II has also felt the impact of all these problems. That is why we transport politicians are urgently interested in a solution, because our stated target, namely that Marco Polo should help to displace 60% of the increase in road freight traffic, is now a long way away. We therefore need to switch direction before the end of this parliamentary term and we have therefore found a most reasonable compromise.
What is to happen? Firstly, the Commission instructed an agency to take over the administration of the programme and to simplify the administration procedure even before this regulation was proposed. That makes sense. We have found and jointly negotiated a whole series of points in the compromise in order to make the programme more attractive. Firstly, the threshold for Motorways of the Sea has been reduced from 250 to 200 million tonne-kilometres a year; secondly, the threshold for traffic displacement projects has been reduced from 80 to 60 million tonne-kilometres, as has the threshold for inland waterway projects, where Parliament pushed through a reduction from 17 to 13 million tonne-kilometres. We have also increased the permissible funding level for additional infrastructures from 10% to 20%. That makes sense. Finally, we also successfully argued that economic crises such as we are experiencing now can also be cited as grounds for extending the term of contracts.
So we have made the programme considerably more attractive. This compromise which we reached was also made possible by a high degree of consensus between all parliamentarians, who put aside justifiable considerations and fundamental debate at this point, in order to quickly get the programme started again. That is why, before the Commission tables a Marco Polo III proposal, we really need a general debate so that we can reintroduce all these points which are necessary to our future orientation. Moreover, we naturally want to know how the adjustment we have made now will work out. This is the subject of the vote and I hope I shall have your support tomorrow."@en1
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