28.5.2009   

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 120/47

—

welcomes the fact that, for the first time in a proposal for a new directive, provision is made for the principle of internalisation of external costs, and that the current proposal to amend the road charging directive is based on wide-ranging studies that looked carefully at the issue;

—

recalls that, in the Transport White Paper, shifting the balance between different modes of transport, taxation in accordance with uniform principles that apply across all modes of transport in order to improve the allocation of transport costs, a level playing field across all modes of transport, promoting the full internalisation of social and environmental costs, the inclusion in infrastructure charging of infrastructure costs and external costs relating to accidents, air pollution, noise pollution and congestion, and the applicability of these principles to all transport modes and all categories of users were stated as objectives of European transport policy;

—

points out that one of the most important objectives of European transport policy lies in transferring cross-border freight traffic — in particular heavy freight traffic — from road to rail and that the EU must ensure that this objective is achieved through appropriate measures if sufficient spare capacity is available;

—

firmly believes that the allocation of external costs on TEN-T lines cannot be left to the discretion of the Member States, but instead that a transparent system based on appropriate criteria should require Member States to allocate external costs and to use the revenue thus accruing for a particular purpose.

Rapporteur

:

Mr Herwig van Staa (AT/EPP), President of the Tirol Landtag

1.

recalls that the European Commission, in its White Paper European Transport Policy for 2010: time to decide dated 12.9.2001, COM(2001) 370, refers to the goal of true-cost pricing set by the Gothenburg European Council and calls for a sustainable transport policy to bring about the full internalisation of social and environmental costs;

2.

notes that the European Commission underscores the need for action to bring about a significant decoupling of transport growth from GDP growth by transferring traffic from road to rail, waterways and public passenger transport. The European Commission adds that taxation must take place in accordance with uniform principles that apply across all modes of transport in order to improve the allocation of transport costs and thus to achieve a level playing field across all modes of transport, and clearly states that charges for infrastructure use are to include both the infrastructure costs and external costs relating to accidents, air pollution, noise pollution and congestion;

3.

regrets that, in the mid-term review of the White Paper on transport policy (Commission Communication of 22.6.2006, COM(2006) 314), there are only a few initiatives aimed at achieving true-cost pricing in transport: only in the chapter entitled ‘Smart charging’ is a new road charging instrument for financing infrastructure and optimising transport announced, in which fees may be modulated to take environmental impact or congestion risks into account, in particular in environmentally sensitive and urban areas, where other forms of capacity allocation could also be used, such as market exchanges of transit rights;

4.

notes that by presenting the new Greening Transport Package and the proposal to amend the road charging directive contained therein, the Commission is fulfilling its commitment arising from Article 11 of Directive 2006/38/EC to present a generally applicable, transparent model for the assessment of all external costs to serve as the basis for future calculations of infrastructure charges. This model is accompanied by an impact analysis of the internalisation of external costs for all modes of transport and a strategy for a stepwise implementation of the model for all modes of transport;

5.

notes that the internalisation of transport costs is a necessary step but it should be accompanied by other measures to make transport more attractive, both to companies and private individuals, who should have access to sufficient infrastructure to meet their needs. Progress is therefore needed on the package of measures to create rail freight networks, with priority for trans-European transport networks. As far as possible, approaches to ensure interoperability between different rail systems must be developed, and an urgent solution to the problems arising from differences in gauge must be found;

6.

welcomes the fact that, for the first time in a proposal for a new directive, provision is made for the principle of internalisation of external costs, and that the current proposal to amend the road charging directive is based on wide-ranging studies that looked carefully at the issue;

7.

further welcomes the fact that, in accordance with Article 11 of Directive 2006/38/EC, the Commission has commissioned a study on best practice in calculating external costs and, in 2007, published the Handbook on estimation of external costs in the transport sector;

8.

points out that one of the most important objectives of European transport policy lies in transferring cross-border freight traffic — in particular heavy freight traffic — from road to rail and that the EU must ensure that this objective is achieved through appropriate measures if sufficient spare capacity is available and should work to ensure that the necessary infrastructure is put in place, particularly for the trans-European transport networks;

9.

recalls that, in the Transport White Paper, shifting the balance between different modes of transport, taxation in accordance with uniform principles that apply across all modes of transport in order to improve the allocation of transport costs, a level playing field across all modes of transport, promoting the full internalisation of social and environmental costs, the inclusion in infrastructure charging of infrastructure costs and external costs relating to accidents, air pollution, noise pollution and congestion, and the applicability of these principles to all transport modes and all categories of users were stated as objectives of European transport policy;

10.

notes that the Commission has not included the cost of accidents in its internalisation of the external costs of road traffic. The Commission states that these costs are covered by insurance company premiums. The Committee of the Regions believes that in most cases insurance premiums do not provide a sufficient incentive to ensure safe driving behaviour. Nor do insurance premiums take into account the social costs of traffic accidents. It is therefore appropriate for the EU to create a framework for assessing and calculating the external costs of accidents. It should then be up to each Member State to decide whether the external costs of accidents are to be internalised on the basis of insurance premiums or by some other method;

11.

further recalls that, in the light of the above, the European Commission believes that transport habits should be changed, by encouraging the public to make more use of public transport modes, as these cannot be separated from the EU's general environmental and climate goals, and EU measures in favour of sustainable mobility should be viewed not only in the light of Article 71 TEC but also of Articles 6, 174 et seq. and 176 TEC, as increasing environment-friendliness and efficiency is a key goal of the common transport policy;

12.

has reservations, however, as to whether the draft under consideration is fit for the purpose of achieving the above-mentioned goals of European transport policy, since there is in the first instance no proposal to allocate all external costs as proposed in Directive 2006/38/EC, and since the European Commission continues to leave to the discretion of Member States whether and on which TEN-T routes to charge tolls. The particular constitutional situation of the Scandinavian countries with regard to the taxation of road freight transport must be taken into consideration;

13.

points out that the recitals include among the aims of the legislative framework the harmonisation of charging systems is only one of the means to remove distortions of competition and that there was already provision for greening by modulating charges depending on the class of vehicle;

14.

hopes, however, that future Commission proposals will provide a more effective answer to the problems caused by major differences in charges and taxes and the resulting unbalanced use of transport modes and the congestion of certain infrastructure, especially as the current legislative framework for road charging has been unable to correct this imbalance;

15.

notes that the European Commission's efforts to align fuel taxation have so far not led to approximation of fuel taxation in the Member States of the European Union and that very significant price differences on fuel remain in Europe. It is essential for the Commission to continue its efforts to reduce major differences in fuel taxation. Until fuel taxes are more extensively aligned, it should be possible for the Member States to internalise the external costs of climate effects;

16.

calls for longer-term gradual reduction in the major differences between systems for the taxation of transport (e.g. vehicle taxes, fuel taxes, etc.) and transparency concerning the use to which the revenue they generate is put;

17.

regrets that differences in infrastructure costs for cross-border freight traffic remain, that non-EU Member States such as Switzerland are even doing better than EU Member States in this area; stresses that even the changes and improvements to road user charges in recent years have brought only minimal changes, that large differences remain between the total tolls collected on comparable stretches and that these cost differences lead to significant re-routing and thus to distortions in competition; calls on the Commission to take measures and to support the Member States in ensuring that choices of road freight routes take environmental impact, road safety and road conditions into account;

18.

is aware that the basis of all the European Commission's deliberations on a common transport policy is ensuring the four fundamental freedoms — in particular the free movement of goods and the freedom to provide services — and that European transport policy has a duty to ensure the technically smooth functioning of transport at low economic cost;

19.

points out, however, that particularly in sensitive regions that are disproportionately affected by external transport costs the impact of heavy traffic on public health and the environment is especially severe and that the free movement of goods has a significant negative impact on sensitive regions; that ECJ case law requires environmental protection to be taken into consideration, and that protection of the environment and of public health is a particular challenge for European transport policy, such that the main aim of creating a modern transport system must now take account not only of economic and social considerations, but also environmental and health considerations, if the system is to be sustainable in the long term;

20.

further stresses that the health of Europe's citizens is precious and that the fundamental right to health and a clean environment must not be made subordinate to the unfettered free movement of goods, and must be made compatible with the principle of free movement of people and goods through the adoption of appropriate measures; in this context, a key role will be played by road safety education policies within schools and the public media;

21.

notes that whilst Directive 1999/62/EC used the weighted average tolls necessary for constructing, operating and developing the infrastructure network concerned as a basis for calculating road user charges, the proposal under consideration does not provide a solution to the fundamental problem of the major differences between road user charges, as there is still no requirement for Member States to collect road user charges on the TEN network: maximum rates are set, but no minimum rates, and Member States decide how to use the revenue from road user charges — there is no hypothecation of such revenue;

22.

endorses the Commission's proposal to earmark revenues from internalisation for mitigating the negative effects of transport on the TEN network. Congestion costs should only be included if there is an action plan that establishes how congestion problems are to be managed, though without being tied to a single mode of transport;

23.

doubts, in the light of the heated discussion on the Commission's proposal, the significant uncertainty in the financial markets and the fears of recession, that all the Member States will apply the system for allocating additional external cost elements;

24.

firmly believes that the allocation of external costs of TEN routes cannot be left to the discretion of the Member States, but instead that a transparent system based on appropriate criteria should be put in place and Member States encouraged in various ways to allocate the external costs and to use the revenue thus accruing for a particular purpose;

25.

observes that in many Member States regions and municipalities are responsible for a significant part of the road network. Introducing tolls for one area or stretch of road can lead to unwanted traffic redistribution. It is therefore important that the Directive specify that all those responsible for road management should be involved in deciding which roads are to be subject to tolls. It is also important that those responsible for road management at local and regional level have a say in how the toll system is designed and how revenues are used;

26.

calls for the allocation of all external costs (such as health, climate change, the environment in general, accidents, the costs of energy production and of vehicle production, maintenance and disposal, impacts on pedestrians and cyclists, land use) and, with this in mind, calls on the Commission to revise the proposal and to include within it a staged plan for the implementation of external costs;

27.

regrets that the draft under consideration mainly targets the allocation of external costs at providing a specific solution to problems that are particularly severe in large urban areas, whereas there is no real allocation of external costs arising on long-distance roads, such that the lack of internalisation of external costs over the whole route will mean that there is no transfer of goods traffic onto the railways and that the actual impact in terms of environmentally-driven changes in driving behaviour will also be marginal;

28.

doubts that, given the demands of the economy (just in time deliveries), even relatively high congestion charges will have the expected impact;

29.

points out that the European Commission's ambitious aims (true-cost pricing, fair charges on modes of transport) can only be achieved if the system is applied across the board over a wide area;

30.

therefore calls for this system to be stimulated and supported so as to avoid a situation where the economic climate means that conditions for implementing this cost allocation only exist here and there in densely populated urban areas (congestion and air pollution);

31.

regrets that no combination of cross-financing and external costs is possible, since cross-financing is mainly a financing instrument and external costs can in principle be used for other purposes;

32.

regrets the absence of the comprehensive consideration of all external costs across the whole network that would be necessary to achieve the transfer of freight to environment-friendly modes of transport by bringing about a sustainable transfer of freight flows to the railways as a result of higher road user charges;

33.

points out that, with different taxes and especially the lack of a requirement to charge a minimum fee and of across-the-board charging for external costs, the imbalance in transport costs on transit corridors will be perpetuated;

34.

stresses that it is also in the interest of road safety to ensure that individual transit routes are not overburdened and that some roads are improved and a sufficient number of alternative, environment-friendly rail and sea routes are created; it is also important to keep promoting the existing motorways of the sea and to support the opening of new routes based on the concept, which helps to reduce the volume of road freight transport;

35.

considers that the proposal constitutes a first step towards avoiding excessive road traffic congestion in general and ensuring that environment-friendly modes of transport increase their market share;

36.

notes that the revised Directive would initially include only heavy goods vehicles weighing over 12 tonnes. The Committee of the Regions sees no reason why the Directive could not apply to all heavy goods vehicles as from its entry into effect;

37.

stresses that disproportionate growth in road freight traffic in conjunction with the current thresholds of European environmental standards has left industry and commerce with little room to develop. Thus, people face not only damage to their health but also a dramatic reduction of their economic opportunities;

38.

points out that re-routing in particular places an unacceptable additional burden on individual transit corridors and, through differences in costs, illegally distorts competition within the Community;

39.

therefore calls on the EU institutions to take all possible public policy measures to ensure that transport costs on each transport corridor are comparable and thus to put an end to re-routing for good, taking into account market needs and development requirements of affected areas when the state and capacity of the different roads are assessed;

40.

refers, for information, to the graphs reproduced in the appendix relating to trans-alpine freight traffic, which show clearly the discrepancy between different road user charges on the key corridors in France, Switzerland and Austria;

41.

shares the Commission's view that measures must be taken to reduce noise from rail freight transport and welcomes the measures proposed by the Commission. Retrofitting existing freight wagons with low-noise brakes looks in particular to be an effective and relatively cheap solution. The Committee feels that the technical specifications for interoperability relating to rail noise (Noise TSI) should also include noise limits for existing rolling stock and should lay down a timeframe for retrofitting. It asks the Commission to examine the possibility of also identifying and prescribing limits for abraded material from potentially dangerous brake components to prevent any long-term damage to the area along the railway track as a result of brake wear and tear. It would ask the Commission to note that modern operating techniques and capacity-enhancing infrastructure measures can be applied so that trains have less need of friction-braking. This could further enhance the energy efficiency of rail transport and further reduce both noise emissions and abrasion.