Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on the Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council applying rules of competition to transport by rail, road and inland waterway COM(2006) 722 final — 2006/0241 (COD)
Date: 2007-03-15
Institutions: European Economic and Social Committee
Subjects: ESC opinion, codification of EU law, competition law, inland waterway transport, rail transport, road transport, transport policy

C 161/100

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

13.7.2007

Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on the Proposal for a Regulation of the
European Parliament and of the Council applying rules of competition to transport by rail, road and
inland waterway

COM(2006) 722 final — 2006/0241 (COD)

(2007/C 161/25)

On Tuesday 12 December 2006 the Council decided to consult the European Economic and Social
Committee, under Article 171 of the Treaty establishing the European Community, on the above-mentioned
proposal.

The Section for Transport, Energy, Infrastructure and the Information Society, which was responsible for
preparing the Committee's work on the subject, adopted its opinion on 21 February 2007. The rapporteur
was Mr Simons.

At its 434th plenary session, held on 14 and 15 March 2007 (meeting of 15 March), the European
Economic and Social Committee adopted the following opinion by 81 votes with one abstention:

1. Introduction

In the context of a people's Europe, it is of great impor-
1.1
tance to simplify and clarify Community law so as to make it
clearer and more accessible to the ordinary citizen, thus giving
him or her new opportunities and the chance to make use of
the specific rights it gives him or her. This aim cannot be
achieved so long as numerous provisions that have been
amended several times, often quite substantially, remain scat-
tered, so that they must be sought partly in the original instru-
ment and partly in later amending ones. Considerable research
work, comparing many different instruments, is thus needed to
identify the current rules. For this reason a codification of rules
that have frequently been amended is also essential
if Com-
munity law is to be clear and transparent.

The purpose of this proposal is to undertake a codifica-
1.2
tion of Council Regulation (EEC) No 1017/68 of 19 July 1968
applying rules of competition to transport by rail, road and
inland waterway. The new Regulation will supersede the various
acts incorporated in it; this proposal fully preserves the content
of the acts being codified and hence does no more than bring
them together with only such formal amendments as are
required by the codification exercise itself.

2. Comments

2.1
Although the proposal is fully in line with the require-
ment set out in paragraph 2, the EESC nevertheless raises the
urgent question as to whether Article 5(2), as it now reads, is
not obsolete. The period referred to,
‘within six months from
the countries mentioned (Austria,
the date of accession’ of

Brussels, 15 March 2007.

Finland, Sweden and the ten Member States that later acceded
‘en bloc’), has already long passed. Only if the agreements, deci-
sions and concerted practices referred to were still under investi-
gation or discussion at a European institution, which should
first be verified, would Article 5(2) still serve any purpose.

In any case the verbatim text of Article 81(1) of the
2.2
Treaty should be used, because not all agreements, but only
agreements ‘between undertakings’, and not all decisions but
only decisions by ‘associations of undertakings’ can fall under
Article 81(1).

2.3
The EESC once again takes the opportunity to reiterate
for the benefit of the European institutions that great misunder-
standings regarding policy-making can arise from combining
maritime and inland waterway transport under the heading
‘waterborne transport’, as in the Mid-term review of the Trans-
port White Paper for 2001-2010, the European Commission's
Legislative and Work Programme 2007, the German EU Presi-
dency Programme, including the 18-month Programme of the
German, Portuguese and Slovenian Presidencies or the current
European Parliament discussion on the proposal of
the EU
Commission concerning liability in the event of accidents in
passenger transport.
Inland waterways and inland waterway
vessels have a completely different legal framework from that of
long-distance or short sea shipping. The present proposal indi-
cates the correct policy framework, which has proved effective
in the past, namely that of inland transport, which can be taken
to cover rail, road and inland waterway transport and combina-
tions of these.

The President

of the European Economic and Social Committee

Dimitris DIMITRIADIS