Strasbourg, 27/09/2002 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday, the European Parliament adopted by a crushing majority (514 for, 9 against and 20 abstentions) the report of British Conservative, Philip Charles Bradbourn, on the Draft Regulation on the awarding of Community financial support for improving the environmental performance of the transport of freight, namely in the form of the Marco Polo programme. This case will be discussed at the Transport Council on 3 October, as it was impossible to reach a policy agreement on the question of programme funding during the Transport Council on 17 June. The Netherlands had prosposed funding of EUR 50 million, whereas Denmark, Austria, the United Kingdom and France agreed on maximum funding of EUR 60 million. Italy and Greece supported the former Spanish Presidency's proposal as an acceptable minimum - EUR 85 million. The Commission had initially proposed a budget of EUR 115 million but agreed to reduce it to EUR 85 million.
The programme objective is to encourage the transport of road freight to other less environmentally harmful modes of transport; 2) Catalyst types of action to back up the structural gaps in the freight market; 3) Common sharing of know-how. The Parliament voted in favour of the Programme but was keen to stress that the modal transfer had to be made between road transport to short-distance maritime transport, rail or inland waterways but not between these three superlatively environmentally friendly modes of transport. It also called for: 1) the European Commission assessment report on the implementation of the programme to be handed in by 31 December 2005 instead of 31 December 2006; 2) the programme being open to all candidate countries and not only countries from Central and Eastern Europe; 3) the minimum amount for eligible projects to be lowered to enable actors with modest means top present proposals (for modal transport actions this threshold has been lowered to EUR 500,000 in stead of EUR 1 million; for catalyst actions to EUR 1.5 million instead of EUR 3 million and for know-how sharing to EUR 250,000 instead of EUR 500,000.