Commissioner, Mr President, first of all I should like to pay my deepest respects to Mrs Sommer, for the quality of the work that we were able to carry out together – thanks to her willingness to listen and also her flexibility on all those occasions where we may have had differences of opinion – which I hope has resulted in our having a very good text even at first reading, a text which I hope will be final. I believe that in the final analysis this directive is very important, on the one hand because its purpose is to make life easier for all those road-transport operators who of course pass through toll stations and who often need to change the system or method of payment, but also because it is a directive which is very much open to the prospects of future technology, in particular as regards the implementation of the Galileo system. We in the Group believe that this directive was initially a little inflexible and very restricting for the motorway-transport sector. In effect, it required that sector to ensure, very rapidly, the interoperability of current microwave systems, in other words to invest very heavily, only to switch very quickly to another system two years later. No doubt it was unacceptable to demand such a double effort from the sector, and I welcome the fact that we were able to agree on Amendment No 48, by Mrs Sommer, which strongly recommends Galileo and advocates waiting for an intermediate report by the Commission in order to determine the conditions under which we shall implement the switch. Nevertheless, we are very keen on the satellite positioning system and we believe that that is where the future lies, not only for tolls, but for a multitude of other services. Secondly, we believe that we have given preference to the interoperability of systems, in other words most of the amendments that we have tabled, whether it is Amendment No 11 submitted by us or Amendment No 46 submitted by Mrs Sommer, are essentially aimed, not necessarily at having a unified system, but at making systems interoperable, and we believe that in the short term that is what should be required. In other words, we also have to ensure that certain microwave systems can be interoperable with GPM/GPRS technology. We have also reviewed the timetable. I think that the timetable proposed by the Commission was quite simply unrealistic, because it did not take into account the time needed for the legislative work and the fact that we were unable to require that the European electronic toll system be brought into line so rapidly, that is, by 1 January 2005. Finally, as far as the Group is concerned, we have proposed, at the request of the City of London – which does not seem to be particularly Socialist – which is following this debate closely, to restrict the scope slightly and to make provision for a transitional phase for local toll systems. London, in fact, has just implemented its own system. It is a very promising experiment and I do not think that we ought to restrict it too much. By contrast, we are fiercely – that is no doubt too strong a word – opposed to the amendments tabled by our Italian fellow Members, namely Amendments Nos 19, 23, 26, 27 and 29, which aim to propose a system of contractual rules rather than a European electronic toll system. We believe that there must be a European electronic toll system. It is clearer from the legal point of view, and it is also more stable, simpler and easier to understand. We shall therefore oppose these Italian proposals. By contrast, we are entirely in agreement with Amendment No 39 which seeks to protect privacy, since we are proposing a switch to Galileo. It seems to us that these precautions are necessary. Finally, we shall approve and support Amendment No 40 tabled by the Group, because we believe that a toll cannot amount to nothing more than a tax or an additional charge. Nor can a toll be simply a means of covering the depreciation of our road infrastructure. A toll must also be a transport-policy tool, and must be able to guarantee modal transfer and cross-financing, so as to encourage people to switch to other alternative modes of transport in future.

Political group: PSE