Twenty-five years after the signing of the Treaties of Rome (and a few months after the European Parliament was directly elected by universal suffrage for the second time), it is worth examining what the European Communities have actually achieved (and the many opportunities missed) along the path followed to date. Our aim therefore was to find a way of assessing one of the most controversial areas where the Treaty establishing the EEC requires the formulation of common policies, namely the common transport policy. In so doing, we were conscious of the fact that, because transport is such a vast subject if all the various modes are included, we would then gain a clear idea of the major themes of European economic integration. Benefiting from the experience gained at the Commission of the European Communities and by the.'Court of Auditors of the European Communities, we have attempted to analyse what has been achieved in the sphere of European transport policy and to use this to gain an insight into the Community's institutional and procedural problems, which in many cases are deliberately perpetuated by national governments for all too obvious reasons since this is a grey area safely removed from the glare of European public opinion. In this way it is to be hoped that the student of transport economics will find in this book sufficiently up-to-date information on the whole history of transport policy within the Community and on the problems facing the various modes of transport in the Member States as reflected at Community level. In addition, young people wanting to know more about certain aspects of Europe will also find illumination. Whether this is merely a glimmer or whether a flood of bright light, it will still show him the way along the long road of good intentions which he is destined to follow, perhaps without being aware of it, treading in the footsteps of those who, in various ways, have worked towards a Europe which has managed to shake off some of the old and self-satisfied national egoism. We have dedicated this book to two such people who both pledged their whole lives to building a new community of Europeans specifically in the field of transport, namely Bruno Minoletti and Lambert Schaus, to whom we are tremendously indebted. Here we would like to link their names with that of one of the great architects of European thought, past and present, Hendrijk Brugmans. (Author/publisher)
Abstract