Brussels, 20/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - At its meeting of 25 July, the European Commission should not be proposing reducing the number of "ecopoints" available for road transit in Austria. Austria may whence decide to haul the Commission before the Court for inaction, Austrian Transport Minister Monika Forstinger announced at a meeting between Commissioner Loyola de Palacio and several representatives of the Austrian Government last week (see EUROPE of 13 July, p.8).
According to the terms of the accession protocol, the Commission should in principle automatically reduce the number of available transit rights, when the traffic exceeds the traffic recorded in 1990 by 8% over a given year, as was the case in 2000 according to Austrian statistics. The Commission and other Member States, however, dispute these Austrian statistics, and consider that it is not therefore necessary to reduce the ecopoints. These statistics are said to be false because of: 1) poor accountancy of transit by piggyback (rail); 2) shortcomings in the recording of lorries on leaving the territory; 3) the accounting of vehicles entering and leaving the territory by the same border.
Austria acknowledges part of these shortcomings, but rests its case legally on the fact that its accession protocol stipulates that the Commission's decisions must be taken on the basis of Austrian statistics, without providing for alternatives.