Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-27-Speech-2-314"
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"en.20050927.22.2-314"2
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"Mr President, as the Chairman responsible for Traffic in the Intergroup on Sustainable Development, I welcome each community-level law and programme that contributes to the development of railway networks and promotes environmentally friendly traffic.
With respect to the third rail package, we have to take note of the fact that the railway networks and their development greatly differ in the various member countries. Whereas in Western Europe the length of high speed tracks reaches 6 000 km, the railway networks in Eastern areas are mostly neglected and run-down. This makes the issue of liberalisation, the opening up of national railway networks to the railway companies of other Member States a complicated one for the East-Central European observer. On the one hand, competition inevitably brings about better services and a more satisfying customer experience. This makes the railway a more attractive option and reduces road congestion, which is a desirable outcome, to be supported for its positive environmental effects. On the other hand, however, Eastern railway companies have been underfinanced for decades. Correcting development policy errors and concepts would take a long time and an enormous amount of money; not a task to be reasonably concluded by 2008 or 2012.
This creates the dangerous possibility that the railway companies of several Member States, including my own, may go bankrupt due to the unfair competition, which would put a severe social, financial and political burden on the respective governments. As a representative of the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, I naturally stand for competition in this area. I stand for competition that serves the interest of citizens and the environment at the same time. However, in this case we would not be talking about fair competition but the prevalence of dominant companies. For this reason I cannot support the proposal of the Committee in its present form and I ask that it be reconsidered."@en1
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