Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Marco Polo is a well thought-out instrument that is designed to promote a shift in freight transport from road to more environmentally friendly modes of transport, and this at international level. It is a practical instrument that will help us to achieve the aim that we have in transport policy, which is, as you know, to stabilise the modal split at its 1998 levels, or restore it to those levels. Hopefully it will be operational as early as next year. Other measures that we envisaged in the White Paper – for example, the first railway package, which we have already adopted, and the second, which we are now working on; cross-financing from road to rail; charges for heavy goods vehicles; internalising external costs – will all only have an effect in the long term or at the very earliest in the medium term if we really get them on track. The Commission's three proposed actions in the programme have clearly been inspired by its experience with PACT. After all, this was a very successful programme, which achieved a great deal over many years, even if the focus is now rather different. Although we now have more money than under PACT, the challenge is also greater, and that is why we need to ensure that the programme's scope is very precisely delimited. In the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism, in a coalition of common sense in transport policy, we managed by and large to identify the main focus of the instrument. In the plenary, however, we are having to work together to fend off two attempts to render this programme of assistance powerless by extending it. The first is a proposal to extend the scope to include intermodal transport. My group opposes the rapporteur's Amendments Nos 8, 10 and 12, because they again seek to contribute, indirectly, to subsidising road freight transport. I do not have anything against intermodality, but that is not the aim this time round; this time it is first and foremost about modal shift. Secondly, we must reject an extension of the scope to transport prevention actions. My group opposes the amendments re-tabled by the , seeking in addition to carry out actions on transport prevention on this tight budget. I would be happy at any time to support a new programme on transport prevention, but its inclusion here would overstretch the programme and after all we want to implement it strategically. Here, less is more! Together we agreed in the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism that we do not want any distortions of competition between the environmentally acceptable modes of transport. We have lowered the minimum subsidy thresholds for the actions, as the rapporteur has explained; we have judged cooperation between operators involved in cross-border transport projects – for example in corridor conferences – to be worthy of support, and we want a budget increase to be reconsidered as part of the mid-term review. I hope that the Council and the Commission will respond to our ideas quickly so that the programme can start next year, because the increasing problems with road freight transport mean that delay is not an option.

Political group: PSE