The ASSESS study is about the “Assessment of the contribution of the TEN and other transport policy measures to the mid-term implementation of the White Paper on the European Transport Policy for 2010”. The European Commission’s White Paper of 12.9.2001 “European transport policy for 2010: time to decide” aims to promote a sustainable transport policy. The White Paper proposes to achieve sustainability by gradually breaking the link between transport growth and economic growth, principally in three ways: changing the modal split in the long term, clearing infrastructure bottlenecks and placing safety and quality at the heart of the transport policy. As foreseen, the White Paper on Transport undergoes in 2005 an overall assessment concerning the implementation of the measures it advocates and to check whether its targets - for example, on modal split or road safety - and objectives are being attained or whether adjustments are needed. ASSESS provides technical support to the Commission services for the above mid-term assessment of the White Paper. The analysis accounts for the economic, social and environmental consequences of the proposed measures and their contribution to sustainable development objectives. It provides also a detailed analysis of those effects of enlargement likely to affect the structure and performance of the EU transport system. The study takes a three pillar approach based on the use of analysis, indicators and models. National transport policies are reviewed for compatibility and coherence with the White Paper objectives. The models used allow a detailed analysis of the freight market, the passenger market and their infrastructure networks under a number of scenarios. This task “political dimension” is part of the qualitative assessment tasks which take the White Paper measures into account in order to complement and integrate the quantitative assessment provided by the models. The analysis of the political dimension concerns two main themes: 1. Institutional problems: competences of the EC, Member states, regions, etc.; 2. Identification of the socio-economic groups affected by the policies (conflicts, lobbies, etc.). The analysis is complemented by the presentation of a set of relevant case studies related to specific political problems of implementation of White Paper measures. One of these case studies deals extensively with the public acceptability of the measures. (Author/publisher)
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