Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to begin by congratulating the rapporteur on behalf of the Group of the European People’s Party and thanking him for his work. Through his positive cooperation, he helped us understand the topic, which was not always an easy task, especially in a technical sense. He managed to immerse us in the subject without burying us. From our perspective, this was a very interesting experience of collaboration. The report, and indeed the Commission’s proposal, contained a number of challenges, and in my view, we dealt with these challenges very positively in committee. A new product must be attractive, in other words, it must be suitable for the market as well as being efficient and complying with modern requirements. I believe this outcome has been achieved. The product is designed to make the process quicker and easier while being suitable for new and existing lifting and stowage techniques. Existing systems will not simply be jettisoned overnight, as this would confront the people working in this sector with the need to undertake new or expensive investment overnight. Their security must be guaranteed. Very good solutions have been found to all these issues, in our view, and the Commission’s proposal and your committee report therefore have our support. Of course, it was the particular example of short sea shipping that was specified here, where intermodal transport already stands at 40%, but intermodal transport has not yet reached these figures in other modes of transport. In my view, the current initiative is designed to be an incentive for business and the transport sector to invest more in intermodal transport. I believe that we will persuade them to do so not only by offering subsidies, but by proposing efficient instruments, such as the all-round container, the supercontainer, as you call it, which allows for optimum loading while also taking account of what is happening on the international market and opening up new opportunities such as those you have described. Overall, we are very satisfied with your proposal. The only difference is that we still take the view that if the product is that good, the market will regulate it, so we do not need to invest any public money, although we are all convinced that it will be good for the overall development of the transport system if many actors become more multimodal. I would therefore like to make one final comment: I see our work today as a technical contribution to this concept, which we all endorse. However, if the loading units that we are proposing demonstrate their efficiency on water, in the air and on road and rail, then whatever form of transport is rolling along beneath them must demonstrate its efficiency as well. I say this to the railways in particular – we can improve the entire multimodal concept as much as we like in technical terms, but if one of the actors in the chain is weak or claims to be weak, the whole concept will be of no benefit whatsoever. So we see this as a positive step in the right direction, but it is also yet another clear wake-up call, especially to the railways, to adopt a multimodal way of thinking, to invest in this concept, and to review their structures and efficiency.

Political group: PPE-DE