Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-24-Speech-3-258"
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"en.20030924.7.3-258"2
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"Madam President, when we debate this issue, anyone can see that, as long as we remain at a theoretical level, we do not have very many disagreements. We all agree that efficient trans-European networks linking eastern and western Europe and northern and southern Europe need to be created, we all agree that the issue of traffic congestion needs to be addressed, we all agree that emphasis needs to be given to the environment and to more friendly means of transport and we all agree that greater emphasis needs to be given to the railways. The problem is when we start to address specific issues. That is where we see that there is a difficulty reaching decisions. For example, Minister, we have been talking about railways for a great many years, but the Council is not distinguished, at least not as a whole I think, by its intention to liberalise rail transport. Because, without liberalisation and without interoperability in the network, it is obvious that the railways, which are the most environmentally-friendly, will never be able to acquire the required momentum.
The same applies to priority works. We had the Essen Council. You know that 14 top priority trans-European networks were approved and, a few years later, we see that half of them have not progressed. Consequently, on numerous occasions you see that we make plans on paper. And this becomes even more remarkable if you think that certain of these works concern what we are talking about now, namely respect for the environment and the need to address traffic congestion in certain sensitive areas of our continent.
Consequently, what is urgently needed is for proclamations and all these plans on paper to find some response in reality. And here we have to look at the question of funding. In a few days' time, no doubt, the European Commission will come along and tell us that it is proposing a new plan reforming the trans-European network guidelines. So we shall jointly adopt a number of priority works. But if we do not fund these works efficiently, it is certain that, as the volume of transport increases, in a short time things will be much worse and the entire European network will be even more overloaded. In this way development too is undermined. Consequently, we need to see how the Member States can assume their responsibilities and how the Union budget will fund the European networks more substantially and what role the European Investment Bank can play in this direction.
I hope the Italian Presidency, which appears to be particularly sensitive to this specific issue, will manage to take efficient steps in this direction because, believe me Minister, debates such as this have been held on other occasions in this Parliament, but the results were not particularly impressive. I trust that you will take the European Union down a different road."@en1
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