Keeping EU transport policy on the move could prove tough for new driving force

Date: 28/06/01

By Laurence Frost

SWEDEN has launched some big initiatives during its six-month stint at the Union's helm. Now Belgium faces the lower-profile - but arguably greater - challenge of putting flesh on bones, and finding actions to follow words.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the field of transport, one of the six pillars of the Commission's sustainable development strategy, broadly endorsed by EU leaders at Göteborg.

Transport is one of the busiest intersections between the new sustainable thinking and traditional sector-based policymaking, where ministers and officials have enjoyed an autonomy that is now under threat.

There is already tension in evidence between Commission President Romano Prodi's sustainable development strategy and the white paper outlining a new common transport policy (CTP).

Over its prolonged gestation, there were signs the paper's emphasis had shifted away from sustainability. Environmentalists claimed Transport Commissioner Loyola de Palacio and her long-serving Director-General, Francois Lamoureux, had backed away from earlier pledges to break the link between economic growth and increased road traffic.

This is a charge that de Palacio denies. In a recent interview with European Voice, she said: "I don't remember personally having said that - the question is whether we are to have a good transport system which is capable of answering the need to maintain sustainable growth and... the quality of life of Europe's citizens."

The white paper that was due to be tabled this week would have argued for more realistic goals that accepted increased road use as a fact of life.

Passenger transport is set to grow by almost 20% by 2010, and freight at double that rate. But Prodi's sustainable development strategy paper makes explicit its aim of "decoupling transport growth from growth in gross domestic product in order to reduce congestion and other negative side-effects of transport". Now the latest postponement of the overdue report - expected in mid-July - is said to have followed an instruction to redraft it from Prodi's Secretariat-General.

Ironing out the difference between these approaches will be just one of the outstanding issues inherited by the Belgian presidency. Environmentalists have high expectations of Belgium's Green transport minister, Isabelle Durant. "They now have the opportunity to put the EU on the road to sustainable transport, with their coordination of the Council's response to the CTP white paper," said Beatrice Schell, director of Transport & Environment. "We look forward to good concrete results by the end of their presidency."

And there are other challenges for the Belgians. They may also have to struggle to keep railway liberalisation on the rails.

De Palacio's plan to follow up freight liberalisation proposals with moves to open up networks for passenger service operators could meet stiff resistance from France, Germany and Belgium's powerful unions.

In the air, meanwhile, are plans for a coordinated air traffic management system - the 'single sky' - that have been put on hold due to Britain and Spain's territorial dispute over Gibraltar. The Commission is determined to break that deadlock one way or another.

Belgium will therefore supervise the task of working out the details of tighter coordination in a field where commercial, military and safety interests must be reconciled.

After one false start, the project will require careful handling.

Article forms part of a survey on the Belgian EU Presidency, July-December 2001.