Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, it is well known that, despite successive reforms, Article 73 of the Treaties remains in force, which means that coordination between the various modes of transport is still a Community obligation. It should not be otherwise, since if this were not the case what would probably happen, given the current trends that we face every day, is that the roads would fill to bursting point with lorries. Such coordination between the various transport modes was taking place under a Regulation that had been in force for thirty years and was beginning to seize up. This gave the Commission an excellent opportunity to put forward this proposal, which will replace the old regulation just in time. This is its intention and we applaud it. We believe, however, that the Commission has displayed a certain degree of prudence in its proposal. It has moved ahead, but rather too tentatively. What is more, everything indicates that most of the political groups in this House are of the same opinion, since this is revealed by the content and the large number of amendments – 116 – tabled and debated in this Parliament’s Committee on Transport, almost all of them with the same message: to use this opportunity to encourage the necessary and appropriate transfer of traffic onto more environmentally friendly modes of transport. This is a desirable objective which, I believe, has to a great extent been achieved, in view of the results of the exhaustive voting that took place in the Committee. Therefore, as the rapporteur, I must congratulate the Members who tabled those amendments, since the results achieved – which today are put before this House as a joint effort by everybody – are the outcome of a broad consensus. I take this opportunity to draw the Commission’s attention to this fact when it accepts or rejects our amendments. We would like there to be a reasonable degree of identification between Parliament and the Commission. In our debates we bore in mind facts such as the following: a vital Kyoto commitment is to cut our polluting gas emissions by 8% by 2010, whereas, if there is no change in the relative shares of the various transport modes, it has been predicted that in the transport sector there will be a 40% increase in these emissions over this period. It has also been calculated that moving goods by rail needs four times less energy than by road. Something similar could be said for transport by inland waterway. Trains can use a greater proportion of renewable energy. If action is not taken in time, road traffic will double between now and 2010. Does all this mean that we have to gradually give up using roads? Not at all. There may be some conflict of opposing interests between the different transport modes – that is to be expected – but the strikingly obvious consequence of all this is that coordination between the various transport modes is still essential. This is precisely the aim of the proposal we are debating today, and through it the respective shares of each transport mode may tend to be redistributed in more rational proportions. In view of this intermodal conflict it must be recognised that the Commission has acted in a reasonably balanced manner in its proposal. For our part, without ever losing sight of that coveted balance, we have moved ahead but only ever opening the throttle in what I would call emergencies, that is, in those objectives that should not wait any longer. For instance, accepting that in practice transhipment between land and maritime transport, and also coastal traffic, has a significant land component and therefore should not be ignored in this directive. Emphasising real, sustained progress, and also research and development. Enhancing combined transport, the de minimis concept for avoiding bureaucracy, and the contractual relationship for ensuring the transfer of traffic from one mode to another that is more beneficial. To end with, what can be said about external costs? It is a fact that there are highly competent consultants who have argued, for instance, that external costs, including traffic congestion, are shooting up to account for 10% of the gross domestic product of Europe, a figure which may be debatable but which is astounding all the same. In view of this we believe that the Commission should tackle this problem now. We urge the Commission to prepare a proposal taking into account the value of such external costs so that they can then be internalised, and then we will have taken a giant step forwards in this matter.

Political group: PPE-DE