Transport policies of the European Union

Abstract.
This business intelligence report describes and explains the successes and failures of the European Union's policies affecting the transport sector, covering the period to December 1999. The new Transport Commissioner, Loyola de Palacio, recently outlined her priorities for the next five years: namely, the single market, safety and environment, infrastructure development, intermodality and international relations. This book uses these same five areas as its framework for setting out all of the significant transport and transport-related developments at the EU level.

The first six chapters are devoted to the functioning of the internal market, reflecting the importance of Community legislation and competition actions in this area. Chapter one starts with an overview of single market policy and de Palacio's priorities for completing the internal transport markets, and gives a broad overview of various horizontal policies, such as those on competition, taxation, customs and procurement. Chapters two to five are devoted to the aviation, maritime, railway, road and inland waterway markets, each one following a similar pattern, covering liberalisation laws, complementary actions, and a detailed look at state aid and antitrust cases.

The next four chapters examine safety and environment policies. The first of these takes a broad look at the links between transport and safety and environment policies, and examines some of the big political issues - working time, climate change and acidification - which are having, and will continue to have, an important knock-down effect on transport policies. The three subsequent chapters look at safety and environment issues in each of the three main sectors: aviation, maritime and inland transport.

A further three chapters look at cohesion, intermodality and research and demonstration. The final two chapters look at international topics: enlargement; and the EU's relations with the New Independent States, the Mediterranean countries, EFTA and the US.

Although expensive, this report is wide ranging, providing both a reference source and an overview of key issues in EU transport policy.