Update on the 2009 European Transport Forum Debate,

September 9, 2009

There is too much needless competition between road, rail, air and sea services, EU Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani told the European Transport Forum in Brussels on September 9. Speaking less than three months after he unveiled a Commission Communication on the future of European transport, Tajani told top policy makers, business leaders, and NGOs that it was time to work on integrating transport modes more effectively. He also appealed for industry and researchers to work harder at developing alternatives to fossil fuels, and he called for the entire transport sector to put the user or customer at the heart of its policy.

The ETF panelists broadly agreed an integrated approach was needed. However, they were split on whether and how far pricing systems could be used to balance out the relative costs of each mode.

Swedish State Secretary Leif Zetterberg said he wanted to see more market-oriented solutions, but he also wanted climate change to be a factor in changing transport behaviour. Zoltán Kazatsay, Commission Deputy Director General for Transport and Energy, warned against artificially changing the pattern of the transport sector, and Åke Niklasson, President and CEO of Volvo Logistics Corporation, warned that taxes had the effect of driving business away. Nicolette van der Jagt, the Secretary General of European Shippers' Council said globalisation was about leaving the market to settle prices, but Belgian MEP Saïd El Khadraoui, who sits on the European Parliament’s Transport Committee, said it was not up to business to tell society how to organize itself.