Mr President, allow me to add my condolences to those expressed to the families of the victims and the citizens of Switzerland in general for yesterday’s terrible accident in the St Gotthard tunnel. Road tunnel accidents have been on the increase in recent months, and this makes it particularly urgent for safety measures not to be delayed any further with White Papers and vague proposals. The reopening of the Mont Blanc tunnel, already well behind the schedule agreed on by the Italian and French Governments in January 2001, must take place within the framework of a number of conditions to ensure traffic safety and reduce environmental problems to a minimum. In concrete terms, it is a matter of putting into operation traffic control mechanisms inside the tunnel, so that, with the application of new technologies and the constant presence of surveillance personnel, any accident will be picked up straight away. Traffic must also be regulated to prevent too many heavy goods vehicles being in the tunnel at the same time; such vehicles could be allowed through in only one direction at a time, for instance, and there could be tighter speed limits and other similar measures. A definitive list should be drawn up of goods banned from being transported through the tunnel, and, in this respect, let us remember that the St Gotthard incident would not have been so serious if one of the HGVs had not been carrying material as flammable as tyres. We should also adopt any other provisions that will help distribute commercial vehicle journeys evenly among the all-too-few road tunnels linking Italy to Europe. We will only find a solution to the many problems posed by road tunnels if, of course, there is a definite shift of freight from road to rail, and it is in this direction that the Union should be directing its efforts. Such a shift, however, is a process that takes time, and so it seems rather unrealistic for those people, who are without doubt moved by the best environmentalist intentions – which we all share – to call today for the total closure of the Mont Blanc tunnel to commercial traffic. It should be noted that in Italy, at least, those same people are also protesting at the building of a new, faster high-speed railway line between Turin and Lyon, designed precisely to help distribute goods transport more evenly, which just shows how contradictory or even absurd such positions, held by certain Italian political groups, can be. While, therefore, we share the environmental concern to protect the alpine environment of the Val d’Aosta, we must not fail to take into account the economic interests – including jobs – that the tunnel implies, particularly for the valley itself and also for Italy as a whole. These legitimate interests are in fact reflected in surveys carried out in the valley, according to which the great majority of the citizens want the tunnel to reopen. What we ask is for the tunnel to be reopened with the safety measures mentioned above implemented, and, at the same time, for there to be a decisive international initiative to develop a new rail infrastructure, including, in particular, the new Turin-Lyon line, improved commercial traffic handling on the Turin-Bardonecchia-Amberieu line, and the widening of the Col di Tenda tunnel and the Aosta-Martigny tunnel. We call on the Italy-France intergovernmental commission, set up under the January 2001 declaration, to report to the European Parliament on all this as soon as possible.

Political group: PSE