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Moins de huit mois avant de proposer un modèle universel visant à faire payer aux utilisateurs de tous les modes de transport pour les effets négatifs qu’ils infligent à la société – pollution de l’air, émissions de CO2, accidents et embouteillages -, la Commission européenne a invité les parties prenantes à participer à ce débat controversé.
The Commission, on 30 October 2007, launched a two-month public consultation
on the sensitive issue of internalising external costs related to transport, notably through the imposition of charges on infrastructure.
The Commission points out that, despite being essential to Europe's prosperity and competitiveness, transport activities produce a wide range of negative side effects, including infrastructure degradation, land use, air and noise pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and traffic accidents, costs which are not borne by the individual user but cost society as a whole a fortune.
"For efficiency as well as for fairness purposes, the costs and nuisances related to transport activities should be borne to a large extent by those who produce them," the EU executive states in its consultation document
.
A 2006 Council and Parliament directive on the use of transport infrastructure by heavy freight vehicles (known as the 'Eurovignette Directive' - see EurActiv's LinksDossier) calls on the Commission to bring an end to this unfair situation by presenting a general model for the calculation of all external costs related to transport and analysing the expected economic, social and environmental impact of their internalisation for all transport modes, by 10 June 2008 (two years after the directive's entry into force).
But many questions will have to be answered before any kind of uniform 'user-pays' system can be introduced for all forms of transport:
Bulgarie
France
Hongrie
Pologne
Rép. tchèque
Roumanie
Slovaquie
Turquie
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