Opinion of the Committee of the Regions on the "Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the granting of Community financial assistance to improve the environmental performance of the freight transport system"
Date: 2002-05-15
Institutions: European Committee of the Regions
Subjects: EU aid, carriage of goods, environmental protection, financial aid

14.11.2002

EN

Official Journal of the European Communities

C 278/15

Opinion of the Committee of the Regions on the ‘Proposal for a Regulation of the European
Parliament and of the Council on the granting of Community financial assistance to improve the
environmental performance of the freight transport system’

(2002/C 278/05)

THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS,

having regard to the Commission White Paper addressed to the Council, the European Parliament, the
Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions on European transport policy for
2010 — time to decide (COM(2001) 370 final);

having regard to the Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the
granting of Community financial assistance to improve the environmental performance of the freight
transport system (COM(2002) 54 final);

having regard to its Bureau’s decision of 6 February 2002 to entrust the Commission for Territorial
Cohesion Policy with the task of drawing up the opinion in question;

having regard to the Council decision of 21 February 2002, under the first paragraph of Article 265 of
the Treaty establishing the European Community, to request the opinion of the Committee of the Regions
on this subject;

having regard to its earlier opinion on Intermodality and intermodal freight transport in the European
Union: a systems approach to freight transport (COM(97) 243 final) (CdR 398/98 fin) (1);

having regard to its earlier opinion on the Trans-European transport network — 1998 report on the
implementation of the guidelines and priorities for the future (COM(98) 614 final) (CdR 60/99 fin) (2);

having regard to its earlier opinion on Cohesion and transport (COM(98) 806 final) (CdR 390/99 fin) (3);

having regard to its earlier opinion on the Interoperability of the trans-European conventional rail system
(COM(1999) 617 final) (CdR 94/2000 fin) (4);

having regard to its earlier opinion on European transport policy for 2010 — time to decide (COM(2001)
370 final) (CdR 54/2001 fin) (5);

having regard to the plenary session’s decision of 13 March 2002 to appoint Mrs Claude du Granrut as
rapporteur-general to draw up an opinion on the subject, in accordance with Rule 40(2) of the Rules of
Procedure of the Committee of the Regions;

having regard to the draft opinion (CdR 103/2002 fin) drawn up by the rapporteur-general, Mrs Claude
du Granrut, Regional Councillor of Picardy, Assistant Mayor (FR-EPP);

whereas the role of transport, in terms of infrastructure as well as of services provision, is of crucial
importance to spatial planning and development throughout Europe;

whereas all levels of government — European, national, regional and local — must cooperate in drawing
up transport policies, but must do so in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity; and whereas local
and regional authorities are the level of government closest to the citizen;

(1) OJ C 198, 14.7.1999, p. 21.
(2) OJ C 293, 13.10.1999, p. 9.
(3) OJ C 226, 8.8.2000, p. 22.
(4) OJ C 317, 6.11.2000, p. 22.
(5) OJ C 107, 3.5.2002, p. 51.

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whereas freight transport is a factor of vital importance both for achieving European integration and for
furthering the economic and social development of the regions;

whereas the Community has no spatial planning powers, but the Commission can propose ‘non-juridical’
policies which can exercise considerable positive influence on the environment and sustainable
development;

whereas the European Union is obliged under the Treaty of Amsterdam to take environmental protection
requirements into account when defining and implementing Community policies, with a view to
encouraging sustainable development;

whereas lessons have been drawn from the PACT programme (1997-2001) aimed at increasing the use
of combined transport by providing financial support for innovative commercial
initiatives in the
combined transport services sector;

whereas the PACT measures have had positive effects on the environment, and particularly in reducing
carbon dioxide emissions;

whereas transport interoperability projects must involve technological options, an innovative route plan,
arrangements for the supply of services and a combination of all these aspects in order to have an effect
on the freight market;

whereas there is a need for more effective and widespread dissemination of measures of the type carried
out under the PACT programmes;

whereas rail, short sea and inland waterway transport are likely to relieve congestion on the roads;

whereas in the light of its positive experience with the PACT programme, the Community should be
equipped with an instrument for combating congestion in the road freight sector and for transferring
part of road freight to short sea transport, the railways and the inland waterways,

adopted the following opinion unanimously at its 44th plenary session (meeting of 15 May).

The Committee of the Regions

1.

Introduction

— endorses a new common freight transport policy which
will be based on intermodality and on rail, short sea and
inland waterway transport, which will seriously address
the problem of road congestion and which will place
safety and quality of services at the heart of its concerns;

— welcomes the new programme for promoting intermo-
dality, known as ‘Marco Polo’, the general aim of which
is to transfer freight from the roads to other transport
modes which cause less damage to the environment, such
as rail, short sea and inland waterway transport;

— notes with interest the three main targets of action of the

Marco Polo programme:

— the first is linked to the initiatives taken by players
in the logistics market. The emphasis will be on aid

for the start-up of new services which will be
commercially viable in the longer term and which
lead to significant modal shifts from road to other
transport systems, without necessarily being techno-
logically innovative. The financial aid will be limited
to the start up time for these services and will
compensate for the commercial risk involved;

— the second relates to actions in the market which
act as a catalyst for structural change. These actions
must seek to overcome structural obstacles of
Community importance on the freight market which
hinder the effective operation of the markets, the
competitiveness of short sea, rail or inland waterway
transport and/or the efficiency of
the transport
chains which make use of these modes. These
actions could include the implementation of ‘motor-
ways of the sea’ or high-speed freight trains, inland
waterway services and equipment pools for tri-
modally compatible intermodal loading units;

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— the third consists of common learning actions on
the freight logistics market in order to strengthen
the spirit of cooperation in this fragmented and
complex sector of intermodal
transport, and to
optimise working methods and procedures with a
view to improving the commercial and environmen-
tal performance of
the firms concerned. These
actions may also take the form of accompanying
measures for the monitoring and evaluation of
projects and collection and analysis of statistical
data.

The implementation of the Marco Polo programme should
lead to savings in social costs. When compared with road
transport, the intermodal transport of goods as advocated
under Marco Polo will reduce social costs by 60-80 % in terms
of accidents and by 40-65 % in terms of carbon dioxide
emissions. Overall, savings in terms of social costs of 33-72 %
will be possible with intermodal transport when compared
with all road transport.

Each action must relate to the territory of at least two Member
States or of one Member State plus an applicant country or
third country.

2. General comments on the Marco Polo programme

The three types of action are linked and should have beneficial
effects on the operation of the intermodal transport system to
be implemented, and enable it
to overcome the market
obstacles that it is likely to encounter.

The Committee of the Regions endorses the aims of
2.1.
the Marco Polo programme, which seeks to ‘improve the
environmental performance of the freight transport system’ in
the European Union, and wishes it success both for the sake of
the environment and for the sake of the buoyancy of the
European economy, and thus of its regional economies.

planned

The
EUR 115 million — an average of EUR 23 million per year.

2003-2007

budget

years

the

for

is

The Marco Polo programme represents a new concept to
improve the environmental performance of the freight trans-
port system.

If no action is taken, road freight transport in the European
Union is likely to grow by about 50 % between now and 2010.
This would lead to further congestion, pollution and accidents.
The socio-economic cost of the additional 12 billion tkm on
roads has been estimated at more than EUR 3 billion per year.

To maintain the traffic share between the various transport
modes at its 1998 level, it is necessary for rail, short sea and
inland waterway transport to absorb the additional 12 billion
tkm per year and to begin to reverse the trend. That is the
challenge for freight traffic in the European Union.

2.2.
Examination of the arrangements for implementing
the Marco Polo programme reveals certain shortcomings in
relation to the needs of the transport modes that are to be
prioritised — rail, inland waterway and short sea shipping —
the logistical organisation of their interoperability, the services
to be set up and the creation of new types of job. The
Committee of the Regions wishes to point out the role of
transport in the development of a regional or inter-regional
territory, and particularly of intermodal platforms, and conse-
quently the importance of taking account of projects drawn
up by regional authorities and/or bodies associated with them.

2.3.
The Committee of the Regions hopes that the ‘trans-
parent, objective and clearly limited’ aid will be in proportion
to the savings made by society through using transport modes
which are the least damaging to the environment; this is in
line with the approach proposed by the Commission in its
draft regulation on aid granted for transport coordination.

The aim of Marco Polo is therefore to help transfer to other
transport modes the volume of goods corresponding to the
forecast growth in international road freight
traffic. The
programme will support the major strategic options envisaged
up to 2010 in the freight sector, and should therefore continue
until that year. Mechanisms are envisaged to ensure flexibility,
which should make it possible to react to market developments
which are not foreseen at present.

2.4.
The proposed calculation, which takes account of
accidents, noise, pollutants, climatic costs (CO2), infrastructure
and congestion, but excludes soil and water pollution and the
use of land, amounts to a subsidy of one euro for each shift of
500 km from road transport (to be adjusted in accordance
with the actual external cost savings resulting from the use of
rail, short sea, or inland waterway transport); this seems fairly
arbitrary, and much less than the theoretical external cost gain
calculated for each mode.

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The Committee of
the Regions takes the view that the
Commission’s approach to external costs is a first encouraging
step in an area where there is strong resistance to change, and
that it is important to support the Commission’s approach and
encourage it to release additional funds in favour of modal
shift policies, either directly by increasing the Marco Polo
budget or indirectly by adapting the rules applying to state aid
in the Member States.

2.5.
The Committee of the Regions is aware that the real
market and operational obstacles which still hinder transport
modes other than road transport must be overcome to enable
these freight markets to develop their full potential, and that
in order to provide high-quality intermodal freight transport
chains it
is necessary to remedy the shortcomings and
constraints affecting each mode.

In order to optimise intermodality between rail and sea
2.6.
the
and/or between inland waterway and sea transport,
Committee of the Regions stresses the need for an effort to
provide streamlined transshipment facilities which dispense
with the need for reloading.

2.7.
The Committee of the Regions takes the view that the
scope of the action envisaged must not be confined to this
essential shift, but must also provide the transport and logistics
sector with a means and a framework for tackling the structural
problems which hinder the operation of the transport market,
and for improving the environmental performance of trans-
port.

2.8.
In this connection the Committee of the Regions recalls
the concern expressed in its opinion on the interoperability of
the trans-European conventional railway system (1), namely
that if a balance is to be achieved between the different modes
of transport in the field of freight transport and the priority
use of transport modes which are more compatible with the
environment, use less energy and involve lower external
it is necessary to harmonise the
costs is to be promoted,
telecommunications and information technologies used by the
various transport modes and any new techniques which may
contribute to the cross-frontier interoperability of national
transport networks.

In order to ensure the viability of competitive intermodal
transport, the Committee of the Regions thinks it essential
to define a common architecture for intermodal real-time
electronic information systems, so that customers can have
continuous information on each stage of their cargo’s journey.

Moreover, an analysis of the situation with regard to rail,
short-sea and inland waterway transport, the Community

( 1) CdR 94/2000 fin.

market in intermodal terminals, and information technologies
shows that the regulatory framework governing access to
freight markets must be thoroughly revised and improved.

The Committee of

the Regions suggests that the
2.9.
Commission should envisage creating a new type of job —
freight integrator — to organise the integrated shipment of
freight whatever the transport modes concerned; similarly,
containers and swap bodies should be standardised so that
transshipments from one transport mode to another are
problem-free.

2.10.
The Committee of the Regions notes that no data or
studies are available at present on the ideal modal breakdown
from the macro-economic and social point of view.

2.11.
In this context and in view of the virtually impreg-
nable position of road transport with its doorstep delivery
network for businesses and individuals alike, as well as its role
of linking up with alternative transport modes at terminals,
the Committee of the Regions would query whether road
transport should be completely excluded from the Marco Polo
programme, particularly as regards the catalyst actions. Road
transport could be integrated into the Marco Polo programme
in the following cases:

— when it provides the terminal links for alternative modes;

— when it is associated with a journey made by a seagoing

Ro/Ro-type ferry or by a ‘rolling road’ system.

2.12.
The Committee of the Regions would point out that
one of the aims of transport policy is to reduce the develop-
ment gap between different regions and the extent to which
disadvantaged regions lag behind. The CoR regrets that this
objective is not mentioned in the Marco Polo programme. At
no point does the Commission proposal mention the use of
secondary rail networks and their contribution to the local
economy. While it does cover inland waterways, it makes no
mention of their potential benefit for the transport of goods
produced for the regions and cities through which they pass.

The Committee of

the Regions points out

2.13.
that
transport plays an important part among all the factors capable
of furthering the economic prosperity of an area, whether it
be regional or inter-regional, and that it is essential to seek to
link up a region’s development projects with the most suitable
intermodal transport system.

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In this connection, the CoR is concerned at the tendency to
encourage the use of the new intermodal forms of transport on
routes passing through regions which are already economically
strong, at the expense of isolated or peripheral regions, and it
takes the view that the Marco Polo programme should be
vigilant in this respect.

Moreover, the Committee of the Regions fears that develop-
ment of rail freight and of innovative solutions for the modal
shift, as proposed in Marco Polo, may favour new operators at
the expense of traditional rail operators. The latter can play a
major role in promoting an intermodal transport system, and
Marco Polo should encourage them to do so in the most
appropriate way.

2.14.
For example, with regard to inland waterways, the
Committee of the Regions stresses the importance of intermo-
dal platforms, interconnections or added-value modal points
for furthering their integration with other transport modes
and hence their economic viability. Consideration should also
be given to making these ‘switchover points’ true centres of
economic activity where regional enterprises could be set up
and jobs could be created.

2.15.
In conclusion, the Committee of the Regions won-
ders, in view of these complementary aims which underpin
the technical research but are necessary to its success, and the
experiments to be carried out, whether the estimated budget
of the Marco Polo programme will be sufficient.

3. Conclusions and main proposals

3.1. Article 1

in this context,

it may appear iconoclastic,

the
Even if,
Committee of the Regions would point out that the capillary
nature of the road network is an undeniable fact which it is
perhaps unwise to ignore when implementing the Marco Polo
programme.

3.2. Article 4

The Committee of the Regions takes the view that local or
regional authorities which have formed a consortium of
private or public bodies should be able to submit directly to
the Commission requests for financial aid for projects forming
part of public transport service plans.

3.3. Article 5

3.3.1. With regard to rail transport, the Committee of the
Regions hopes that not only will a new pricing policy be
decided, but also that cross-frontier traffic will be facilitated
and rail safety guaranteed.

The Committee of the Regions notes that rail freight transport
will not be able to develop fully if its main competitor, road
transport, does not pay all its social costs.

The Committee calls for the creation of a European rail agency
and collaboration with the traditional rail operators.

3.3.2.
Inland waterway transport, the Committee of the
Regions notes, will develop fully once the transport of goods
to and from waterways is facilitated by high-performance
transshipment systems within seaports’ logistical platforms.
The Committee also recommends that the conditions for
treatment of waterway vessels in seaports should not be
discriminatory, particularly in comparison with road transport.

The Committee recommends support for innovative experi-
ments involving regular multimodal services which include a
logistical waterway link. However, the Committee fears that
the relative lack of hold space as a result of scrapping plans
may make it impossible to meet the emerging demand for
waterway transport from shippers. It therefore recommends
support for initiatives to renew modern hold space suitable for
new traffic, and an effort to promote the profession among
young people.

Inland waterway transport is now suitable for all kinds of
traffic once the conditions for expansion are established. In
order to meet this demand for bulk and container traffic, and
the transport of chemical products, dangerous materials and
heavy packages, it is important for Europe to have a wide-
gauge network providing a more fluid market between the
various regions of
the Union. The Committee therefore
recommends further efforts to provide the infrastructure for
such a network.

The Committee of the Regions suggests that certain insti-
tutional adaptations (regulation, access to equipment) should
accompany the infrastructure improvements (headroom and
draught, gauges, internal platforms) to help raise the overall
average productivity level for this mode of transport.

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3.3.3. With regard to short sea transport, the Committee of
the Regions approves the reference to ‘motorways of the sea’
and to cabotage, i.e. to the economic dynamism of European
ports, whether they are of international importance or not, in
order
logistics and the fluidity of
Community trade with goods not having to be reloaded.

to encourage rational

3.4. Article 6

The Committee of the Regions points out that the Marco Polo
programme must take care to ensure that the new intermodal
forms of transport to be encouraged are not found solely in
the highly developed regions. On the contrary, the programme
should give priority to new routes likely to open up isolated
or peripheral regions.

The Committee of the Regions stresses the importance of
intermodal platforms, interconnections or added-value modal
points to encourage true centres of economic activity where
regional enterprises could be set up and jobs created.

3.5. Article 7

The Committee of the Regions proposes that the Marco Polo
programme should support harmonisation of the telecom-
munications and information technologies used by the differ-

Brussels, 15 May 2002.

ent transport modes and any measures which could contribute
to cross-frontier interoperability.

The Committee of the Regions proposes that a common
architecture be defined for intermodal real-time electronic
information systems so as to provide customers with continu-
ous information on the transport of their products; that a new
job of freight integrator be created; and that containers and
swap bodies be standardised.

3.6. Article 8

The Committee of the Regions would like the Marco Polo
programme to include actions which can benefit the economic
development of an area, even if they are small scale. By way of
example, it would mention the ‘missing links’ of cross-frontier
projects and ‘overheating links’ which make it possible to
differentiate between transit traffic and local traffic.

3.7. Article 12

The CoR wonders whether the budget for the programme is
sufficient to achieve its aims.

The Committee of the Regions considers that, since the Marco
Polo programme would lead to direct and indirect savings for
society, the funds allocated must be commensurate with the
expected savings.

The President

of the Committee of the Regions

Albert BORE