Reply to the 14th annual report of the European Ministers of Transport
- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- Assembly debate on 27 September 1968 (18th Sitting) (see Doc. 2443see Doc. 2443, report of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Development). Text adopted by the Assembly on 27 September 1968 (18th Sitting).
The Assembly,
1. Thanks ECMT for the transmission of its 14th annual report and notes with satisfaction that the ECMT Council has given careful attention to certain of the points raised in Assembly
Resolution 352 (1967) ;
2. Recalling the great importance the Assembly has attached in previous resolutions to ECMT's drawing up common principles for a surface transport policy, looks forward, despite the considerable difficulties to which the 14th annual report refers, to some progress being achieved in this field before the publication of the 15th annual report, and appeals to the governments concerned to manifest a real spirit of give and take to this end ;
3. Expresses the hope that the discrimination in favour of the one or the other mode of transport be limited so as to permit the readaptation of existing obsolete investment patterns to the new demands, thus furthering a rational division of work between the different modes of transport and the building up of a transport system based on economic considerations, subject to overriding necessities of a social nature ;
4. Expresses its conviction that until basic transport problems are approached as a whole instead of separately sector by sector, both at national and at European level, and are further considered essentially from the economic angle, whether transport enterprises be operated as public utility or privately run, transport as a whole will continue to burden the economy and will not be able to contribute fully to economic expansion in Europe ;
5. Attaches the greatest weight, therefore, to the rapid completion of the traffic demand forecasts and other current studies carried on by ECMT governments, to ECMT deputies' making the fullest use of the findings of the two symposia on transport economics and to their providing the economic research unit in the ECMT Secretariat with the necessary information and other resources ; and in view of the interdependence between all forms of transport, expresses its conviction that close collaboration between ECMT and ECAC is called for ;
6. Welcomes the work carried out by ECMT in the field of studying the administrative, legal, economic, and technical obstacles which have been hindering the wider use of certain existing but comparatively new transport techniques, particularly those permitting of efficient and up-to-date door-to-door freight services through the use of containerisation and allied methods ; nevertheless believes that it would be invaluable if ECMT were to take a further initiative by reviewing whether there are not other new and highly promising techniques which have not so far come into commercial use precisely because of the existence - though to a greater degree - of the kind of obstacles investigated in the case of door-to-door freight services ;
7. Having regard to the special economic problems presented by urban transport, warmly approves of the work being undertaken by ECMT in this field, and would welcome fuller information on the trends of thinking which have so far emerged ;
8. While appreciating that the financing of the channel tunnel project is in the first instance a matter for the British and French Governments, expresses its firm conviction that the moment a definite decision has been taken by those governments to go ahead with the project, ECMT should undertake a study of the economic implications for European transport as a whole, and of the legal, administrative and technical changes that will be required in existing practices if the maximum economic benefit from this new transport link is to be obtained by all its member countries.
