Brussels, 06/07/2010 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 6 July, with the approval of the report by Mathieu Grosch (EPP, Belgium) on sustainable transport development (559 votes to 34 and 82 abstentions), the European Parliament gave its support to an ambitious policy in order to ensure, by 2020, the security, the “decarbonisation” and the efficiency of transport. MEPs above all took a stance in favour of strengthening funding for research, also upholding the 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a doubling of the number of passengers using coaches, trams and railways. They nonetheless rejected the idea of setting up a transport fund as suggested by the rapporteur, a fund that would be partially formed from structural and cohesion policy resources. A very slim majority of MEPs (346 to 311 and 14 abstentions), on the other hand, did adopt the amendment submitted by Danuta Hübner (EPP, Poland), which calls for the creation of a mechanism for coordinating the various funding sources already existing (EIB, public private partnerships, national budgets, cohesion policy). “About €70-80 billion are earmarked in the cohesion fund for transport”, Hübner said, expressing her objection to the “sectorialisation” of European funding to the detriment of cohesion policy. “Simply transferring funding to a transport fund will not increase the means available” but would simply modify the arrangements for sharing the funding, Hübner said. Her country is the largest beneficiary of EU funding. In addition to the instruments explicitly foreseen for transport (especially the trans-European transport network), 15 member states may benefit from Cohesion Fund resources for transport projects (12 new member states plus Spain, Portugal and Greece). (A.By./transl.jl)