Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, it is early in the morning, and those of us who work in the domain of transport policy are delighted to have the opportunity to debate transport issues in the morning for once rather than at 9 or 10 p.m. (Applause) We hope that a few journalists are here too on this occasion, because the evenings are always so long, and so it is sometimes a little difficult to adhere to scheduled starting times. Anyway, without further ado, let us turn to the matter in hand. What we are discussing today are better conditions for railway operations in the European Union. By means of the three directives and one regulation, we seek to ensure that conditions are improved to such an extent that the railways in Europe will again be able to transport more goods and more passengers. As the rapporteur for the Directive on the development of the Community’s railways, allow me to begin by expressing my great satisfaction at the Council’s acceptance of our parliamentary position, which, contrary to the Commission’s proposal, advocates the preservation of the Trans-European Rail Freight Network that was established on 15 March 2003. Since that date, this first step towards the opening of the rail network in the fifteen EU Member States, which effectively covers 90% of the main rail corridors, has presented rail operators, irrespective of their national origins, with an equal opportunity to use the European rail network for international freight traffic in a way that best suits the needs of customers. Secondly, Parliament agrees with the Council regarding the opening of the remaining lines in the rail network to international freight traffic on 1 January 2006. That, however, is by no means a huge leap forward, since, as I just mentioned, practically 90% of total track mileage was opened to international freight traffic on 15 March of this year. Consequently, Parliament continues to call for the rail networks to be fully opened to national as well as international freight operators on 1 January 2006 so that the entire EU rail network will be open to all freight services, be they national or international, on that date. In this way we can truly achieve the aim set down in the Commission White Paper – and I am grateful, Commissioner, that we have always followed the same line here – to restore rail transport to its former market position by 2010 and to transfer as much freight as possible to the railways. The aim is more comprehensive than this, however. The White Paper is not just about freight; it is about striking a balance between the various modes of transport by the year 2010. For this reason, Parliament takes the view that passenger networks must be opened up too. If you consider the increase in the number of private cars on the motorways and the growth in the volume of air traffic, you will appreciate that our motorways and air corridors are coming close to saturation point. And this is why we in this House want the rail networks to be opened to operators of passenger trains on 1 January 2008. Unless we take that step, the shift from road to rail and air to rail that is envisaged for the year 2010 will leave passenger traffic untouched. It is quite worrying to see how low-cost air carriers are taking custom away from the European railways. I hope, Commissioner, that in the next few days you will have something to say about Charleroi airport in Belgium, because it is not acceptable that the railways should be making huge losses on their long-distance passenger services because the cheap airlines are luring their customers away and congesting our skies. In short, we want to ensure that the aim of rebalancing the transport market by 2010 applies to passenger transport too. Some people have repeatedly stressed that the Commission has announced the presentation of a third rail package by the end of the year, a package that will include passenger transport. That is all very honourable, Commissioner, but it does not help us in any way, because, as you know, if the Commission failed to present this package by December of this year, we could no longer adopt the package, or even give it a first reading, before the end of the current legislative term. Even if we did manage the first reading, the intervention of the European parliamentary elections, the appointment of a new Commission and the need to reactivate the legislative process would mean that it would effectively take one to two years to put through a bill on passenger transport, and so we could not adopt a third railway package before 2005. I believe, however, that the train operators need to know for certain now whether they will be able to benefit from a legal right of access to the entire network. We want them to have time to anticipate the needs of the travelling public so that we are actually able to effect the transfer of a substantial volume of long-distance traffic from road and air to the railways by 2010. Lastly, the committee proposed that the existing options allowing Member States to permit companies other than railway undertakings to apply for train paths should be scrapped in favour of a provision enabling consignors, forwarders and the like to apply for the use of train paths alongside railway undertakings in all Member States. We believe that every effort must be made to optimise the use of the rail infrastructure. We know that there is still spare capacity today, even on the Brenner line, and there is no point in our continued grumbling about HGVs when even this transalpine rail link still has spare capacity. In other words, we must enable more players in the market to apply for and use the available train paths if we want to maximise the volume of freight carried by rail. Allow me, as the spokesman for my group, to say a few words in anticipation of the other two reports, because it would make no sense for me to sit down and then stand straight back up again. I should like to begin these remarks on behalf of my group by expressing my sincere thanks to the rapporteurs from the other groups. We worked very well together, both at the time of the first reading and in preparation for the present second reading. Although Mrs Ainardi, Mr Sterckx, Mr Savary and I differed in our positions on specific points, we always regarded the railways package as an integral whole, hence our close cooperation as rapporteurs. I am highly gratified that we are all trying to follow the same line. You will be aware that the Council has already tried to find compromises that will enable us to conclude the legislative process quickly. The Council, along with the rapporteurs, has basically been trying to reduce the number of points at issue between the Council and Parliament, sometimes by accepting parliamentary positions and sometimes by proposing compromises, with the result that the conciliation procedure will focus on a core of considerably fewer than sixty or seventy points. I hope that we shall hear some judicious statements from the Council tomorrow regarding its intention of adhering to the line we began to discuss last week. We are interested in reducing the number of disputed points so that we can really focus our full attention on the major problems at the conciliation sessions. To this end, my group will carefully examine the latest batch of amendments to the railway directives and will vote accordingly on Thursday. Allow me to make two or three remarks on the Sterckx report. Mr Sterckx has tried very hard – for which I am grateful to him – to ensure that the European rail-safety standards guarantee a high level of safety and that there is no scope for the introduction by the back door of new national safety rules which would ultimately reinstate arbitrary restrictions on international traffic. I believe it is very important that we cooperate with the Commission in order to find a mechanism that prevents the introduction of allegedly essential safety provisions that are actually designed to discriminate against other rail operators. My group also attaches importance to the proper training of train crews and all other personnel on whom the safety of rail travel depends. We still have a problem here, Commissioner, that being that one directive devoted purely to the training of engine drivers might not suffice. We must train all other safety-related personnel to the appropriate standard of qualification. I support Mr Sterckx on the last point I wish to address from his report, a point on which I believe we all agree: staff training certificates must not lose their validity when personnel move from one railway undertaking to another. We need a single market for engine drivers too. We need competition throughout the domain of rail transport. Let me turn now to the Savary report. Mr Savary has very carefully incorporated the new budgetary rules, and I believe that the Council will endorse this so that all agencies have uniform budgetary rules and so that we avoid a situation in which each agency has its own rules, creating an incomprehensible tangle of budgetary provisions. The main point in the Savary report – and we are right behind the rapporteur on this – is the imbalance in the Council’s proposal for the composition of the Administrative Board. The amended proposal made by the Commission is for an Administrative Board comprising six representatives of the Council, four representatives of the Commission, and six non-voting representatives of the industry, in other words of the relevant railway undertakings, and rail users. The Council is now proposing that all Member States be represented on the Board. This would mean that six representatives of the interested parties, four Commission officials and, from May of next year, twenty-five Council representatives would sit on the Board. Only the Council could devise such a ludicrous scheme, and we therefore endorse the rapporteur’s view that we must use the conciliation procedure to put an end to it. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE