Brussels, 05/05/2003 (Agence Europe) - The Council adopted by written procedure on 25 April a common position on the proposed regulation on the "Marco Polo" programme, which aims to promote the transfer of road freight to other forms of transport which are less harmful to the environment, from 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2010. The Council approved its political agreement of 5 and 6 December, which provided for a budgetary envelope of 75 million Euros, for the period from 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2006. This agreement was reached painfully after months of negotiations between the Commission (supported at first reading by the European Parliament), which initially demanded 115 million Euros, and the Council, where delegations were divided between 50 million Euros (Netherlands), 60 million Euros (Denmark, Austria, United Kingdom, France), and 85 million Euros (Italy, Greece). The Council's common position will be second to the European Parliament for the second reading (codecision).
The common position, which takes up several of the Parliament's amendments from first reading (EUROPE of 28 September 2003), emphasises notably that 1) the programme should be open to all accession candidate countries plus EFTA and EEA countries; 2) the minimum threshold of amounts for eligible projects should be reduced by half to allow small players to present projects (for modal shift actions, 500,000 Euros rather than one million, for catalyst actions 1.5 million Euros instead of 3 million, knowledge-pooling actions 250,000 Euros instead of 500,000); 3) the programme should ensure the transfer from road transport to a combination of several modes of transport. However, the Council is waiting for the Commission's evaluation report on the Parliament's request to implement the programme on 31 December 2006, rather than 31 December 2005.
The objective of the proposed regulation is to establish a financial instrument, the "Marco Polo" programme, to promote transfer of road freight to other modes of transport, which are less damaging to the environment, in order to guarantee sustainable transport, through the funding of three types of action: 1) modal shift aiming to unburden road haulage in favour of other modes of transport; 2) catalyst actions to offset the structural inadequacies of the freight market; 3) knowledge-pooling.