This White Paper explains how infrastructure charging reform can solve many of the transport sector's problems, and help develop European transport services. It has evolved out of the discussions on the 1993 Commission White Paper on "The future development of the common transport policy", the 1995 Commission Green Paper "Towards fair and efficient pricing in transport", the 1996 report of the high level group on public private partnership, and most recently, the report of the high level group on infrastructure charging, set up in spring 1998 to advise on the development of a comprehensive set of charging principles. Finally, the joint Transport/Environmental Council in June 1998 also called for measures to make the best use of the existing infrastructure, to achieve a shift to less environmentally damaging modes of transport, and the use of economic instruments to reduce fuel consumption, emissions, and noise. This paper is structured thus: (a) the current problems of infrastructure charging and the need for introducing more convergent charging principles are summarised; (b) Community wide charging principles are presented and their implications in relation to the problems are illustrated; (c) a plan for the implementation of such principles in all modes is outlined; (d) the implications of the proposed charging regime are examined. (A) For the English version see C 16254.
Abstract