Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-285"
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"en.20000516.11.2-285"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, a great deal has been said in today’s discussion. In my view, the most important points to be borne in mind are two figures, which are really quite shocking. The first is that in 1970, the railways had a 20% share of the freight market, whereas today they have just 8.5%. The second figure concerns the average hourly speed of railways in Europe, which is 16 kilometres per hour. And all this in the year 2000!
Evidently, we need an immediate political response from the 15 Member States of the European Union. Before such a response can be given, we first need to understand the problem and we need the corresponding political will. In my view, and of course this is the view of all those who have spoken today, we need to take steps as regards network compatibility and interoperability, because we have different technical specifications, different standards and different management systems. And of course, we all endorse the report by Mr Savary, whom I would once again like to commend on his work.
However, it is not enough for us just to forge ahead with interoperability. We need to consider the entire railway liberalisation package and combine this with interoperability. In this context, I would like to say that the Helsinki Council resolutions may well be satisfactory, but they are inadequate. If we want to make headway, then we need to adopt the opinion expressed by the European Parliament at first reading, because it deals more fully with the problem which, as is already quite clear I think, is a particularly acute problem. We should all realise that a common market without a unified transport network is simply will-o’-the wisp. So if we want to examine the problem in its entirety, we need to have, and to provide, the necessary responses.
I would like to add two separate issues concerning my country, Greece, since my capacity as chairman of the Transport Committee does not, I imagine, deny me the right to raise problems of this kind. The first problem is that Greece has no main cross-border rail links, especially with other Member States. On the contrary, it has important cross-border rail links with third, non-EU countries, which are not bound by Community legislation and, consequently, employ their own national standards and systems and will no doubt continue to do so in the shorter or longer term. This is certainly an issue which merits special mention and regulation so that the European harmonisation we are working for does not prove to be detrimental to the cross-border rail networks of countries such as Greece.
Another issue I would like to touch upon is that special provision should be made for peculiarities and differences caused by the geographical location and topography of various Member States such as Greece, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, etc., whose remote or island nature causes particular problems."@en1
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