Let me start by warmly thanking my fellow-Members of this House for their very constructive cooperation, especially the shadow rapporteurs, to whom many thanks. The proposal that the Commission put before us was indeed a very ambitious one, with much promised by a forward-looking new technology based on satellite navigation and mobile communications. By 2012 at the latest, according to the proposal, the Member States were to be required to use this technology for the charging of tolls, which would have meant the abolition of all the other technical systems currently in existence, which are based on short-range microwave technology. This was meant to achieve technical interoperability, which was the actual object of the legislation. It is also the right one. In a common internal market, it is not acceptable for technical barriers to put the brakes on the flow of traffic and hence on the transport of goods. Incompatibility between national toll systems could have no other result; it creates problems for international road traffic and interferes with the smooth functioning of the internal market. The legislative proposal also aims at contractual interoperability; one contract for each user, and valid throughout Europe, would certainly be a good thing. I might mention that this is also an ambitious goal in view of the continuing need for a great deal of harmonisation within the EU, whether in the fiscal, administrative or legal spheres. I was unable, however, as this House’s rapporteur, to go along with the Commission proposal as it relates to technical interoperability. Why is this so? The problem we face is that the new toll technology that the Commission favours, and which is currently being developed only in Germany, does not yet work. Technology that does not work does not exist in real terms, so can legislators prescribe as mandatory something that does not exist? Is it, in any case, any legislator’s task to prescribe one technology or another? No, I do not believe that it is. As the majority of my fellow-Members share my view that it is for the market to decide what specific technologies should be used, we have agreed not to follow the Commission on this point. We want to take a more technology-neutral approach. We take the view that the actual objective – the technical interoperability of the various systems – has to be achieved. We have been told by the users – the operating companies in the various Member States in which electronic toll-charging systems are in use – that this can be done. By the present proposal, as now amended, we insist on this; technical interoperability must be achieved, and what this ultimately means is that the technology currently in use must be changed only as and when it cannot be enabled to communicate with other systems of technology. We also see it as important that subsidiarity should be safeguarded. The basic decision on whether or not to charge a toll, on what vehicles and what stretches or types of road, must remain a matter for the Member States. I also think it is important that I should take this opportunity to point out that data protection must be treated as a matter of the highest priority. We do not want drivers to end up having everything known about them. Let me add that, in all our debates, I repeatedly stressed my view that satellite technology is extraordinarily important. I am convinced that we are doing the right thing in developing Galileo, the European satellite system. In order to put this conviction on record, I have now, at first reading, tabled an amendment drafted in stronger terms. I would emphasise that it was my esteemed colleague Mrs Langenhagen who originally tabled this amendment in the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism, where it struck me as too rigorous to be able to command a majority. As regards tomorrow’s vote in the plenary, though, I am working on the assumption that this House will endorse this unequivocal vote in favour of Europe having its own satellite navigation system, one that will make us Europeans independent of others. This, again, I ask you to support. Let me conclude by asking you to believe me when I say that for me, as a German rapporteur, it has not – heaven knows – been an easy matter to propose this course of action to you. The original draft from the Commission would eventually have given German industry an enormous opportunity; it could have marketed the new and innovative toll-charging technology the length and breadth of Europe. This new technology is fantastic. Not only – I am convinced – is it the only technical solution that can be regarded as suitable to German conditions, but it also has many other potential uses over and beyond simply collecting tolls. Let me reiterate, though, that a technology that does not exist in real terms cannot be made mandatory by law. It is a source of bitter anguish to me that the amateurish approach adopted by the German Federal Government, particularly when negotiating the contracts to introduce toll-charging technology, has resulted in such a debacle, one that leaves us, at European level, no solution other than the one I have now proposed to you. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE