Brussels, 23/09/2002 (Agence Europe) - The exchange of views concerning the Austrian system of ecopoints for heavy goods traffic that was held within the European Parliament transport committee led to unanimity on two points: transit traffic in the Alps is an Alpine problem, not only Austrian, and that road transport had to be encouraged to move to rail. For the rest, the Italian and Austrian transport ministers stuck to their respective guns, and thus do not agree on how to resolve the problem.
Matthias Reichhold, Austrian Transport Minister stressed that his government would continue to implement the system of ecopoints until the European Commission had presented clear proposals on how to finance the project of constructing a 50 km tunnel under the Brenner Pass (region that receives 60% of the transit traffic through Austria), tunnel whose importance was recognised by all parties present, but the cost of which is estimated at 3.8 billion euro. His Italian counterpart, Pietro Lunardi, backed by the German Transport Minister Angelika Mertens criticised the Austrian system. Germany considers that it is up to Austria to release the necessary funds to build Brenner Tunnel. For the Italian Minister, the ecopoint system does not work and the permanent requests to prolong it is a "source of discrimination and injustice". For the Euro-MP member of Forza Italia, Giacomo Santini, the system should already have been abolished for two reasons: it limits the movement of persons in the EU, and the bilateral agreements signed between Austria and Italy were justified by the provisional nature of the system. For the chair of the transport committee, and rapporteur on the issue, Luciano Caveri (Italian, ELDR), although environmental concerns justified the setting up of the system, the 108% clause limits its positive effect on the environment. Mr. Caveri states that the system has led heavy goods vehicles to circumvent Austria, opting for longer itineraries, and thus "carrying the problem of pollution to other regions". In addition, it costs Austria a lot of money, even though, according to the rapporteur, "there is great internal pressure to maintain the system".
Provisionally, the European Commission has proposed extending the system until 2004, with the possibility of extending it until 2005 and 2006, without the 1088% clause. This proposal will be on the agenda f the 3 October Transport Council.
As a reminder, transit traffic of HGVs (of a weight in excess of 75 tonnes) through Austria is governed by an ecopoint system, authorised on the basis of Austria's accession protocol to the EU, which aims to limit the number of lorries transiting. And for good reason: the region of Brenner, which links southern Germany to Italy, receives 60% of the transit traffic through Austria of which 2/3 are Italian and German HGVs. Each HGV has to pay a certain number of ecopoints proportional to the quantity of pollution emitted for each transit through Austria. The total number of ecopoints available to Member States is set annually with the goal of reducing by 60% the amount of pollution by the end of the system, initially scheduled for 2003. Other than this annual reduction, the system provides for an additional reduction mechanism, "the 108% clause": if the total number of trips in transit made over a year is in excess of 108% of the total of the reference year (1991), or in excess of 1,610,172 trips in transit, the number of ecopoints granted to Member states is reduced the following year.