11 Freight transport
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10982/13
+ ADD 1
COM(13) 278
| Commission Communication: The Marco Polo programme: results and outlook
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| Legal base | —
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| Document originated | 14 May 2013
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| Deposited in Parliament | 5 June 2013
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| Department | Transport
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| Basis of consideration | EM of 17 June 2013
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| Previous Committee Report | None
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| Discussion in Council | Not known
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| Committee's assessment | Politically important
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| Committee's decision | Cleared
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Background
11.1 A 2001 Commission White Paper on transport policy proposed
that more intensive use of short sea shipping, rail and inland
waterway transport should be key elements in the development of
intermodality as a practical and effective means to achieve a
balanced transport system. This led to establishment of a programme,
named Marco Polo, to support actions aiming at shifting freight
from roads to short sea shipping, rail and inland waterways or
to a combination of modes of transport in which road journeys
were as short as possible. Marco Polo I ran from 2003 to 2006,
with a budget of €102 million (£87 million), and was
followed by a successor programme, Marco Polo II, which runs from
2007 until the end of this year, with a budget of €450 million
(£384 million).
11.2 The Regulation establishing the second phase
requires the Commission to report on the results achieved by the
Marco Polo programmes during the period 2003-10.
The document
11.3 This Communication is the evaluation report
required for the Marco Polo programmes during the period 2003-10
(the Commission updates the period by including operational data
obtained up until November 2012). The Communication is accompanied
by a Staff Working Document giving more detailed information.
11.4 The effectiveness of the whole programme
is measured in terms of realised modal shift/traffic avoidance.
The Communication and accompanying Staff Working Document give
the following details:
- statistics for the number of
proposals in each year of Marco Polo I and II, the number of contracts,
available budget, committed funds and paid funds;
- the effectiveness of the programme, in terms
of modal shift;
- the amount of road freight transport in the EU;
- the environmental benefits; and
- the efficiency achieved by selected projects.
11.5 The Staff Working Document also discusses:
- the impact of the Polo II Regulation
(as amended);
- the experience of the Executive Agency for Competition
and Innovation with programme management;
- the need to differentiate between transport modes
with regard to the conditions for funding on the basis of safety,
environmental performance and energy efficiency;
- the effectiveness of traffic avoidance actions;
- the need to set up demand-driven assistance at
the application stage, taking into account the needs of small
and micro transport enterprises;
- recognition of economic recession as an exceptional
reason for extending the duration of actions;
- lowering of the eligibility thresholds for product-specific
actions;
- the possibility of indicating targets for minimum
funding thresholds for proposed actions in terms of energy efficiency
and environmental benefits in addition to tonne-kilometres shifted;
- the appropriateness of including the transport
unit in the definition of the term 'freight';
- the availability of complete yearly overviews
of actions which have been co-financed;
- the possibility of ensuring consistency between
the programme, the Freight Transport Logistics Action Plan[52]
and the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) by taking appropriate
measures to co-ordinate the allocation of EU funds, in particular
for Motorways of the Sea;[53]
- the possibility of making costs incurred in a
third country eligible if the action is carried out by undertakings
from a Member State and the possibility of extending the programme
to neighbouring countries;
- the need to take into account the specific characteristics
of the inland waterway sector and its small and medium sized enterprises,
for example by way of a dedicated programme for the inland waterway
sector; and
- the possibility of further adapting the programme
to the insular and archipelagic Member States.
11.6 The Commission reports that:
- Marco Polo I achieved 45.9%
of the expected target modal shift of 47,714 millions of tonne-kilometres
(Mtkm);
- the total modal shift for Marco Polo II had reached
19,500 Mtkm by November 2012, compared to the expected total of
87,704 Mtkm, but these figures represented on-going projects and
the total would increase over time;
- there was a total of 1,756 billion tonne-kilometres
of road freight transport in the EU in the period 2003-10;
- Marco Polo I achieved €434.05 million (£370
million) of environmental benefits on the basis of external cost
coefficients provided for environmental impacts (air quality,
noise, climate change) and socio-economic impacts (accidents,
congestion) in 2003-06;
- Marco Polo II achieved €405 million (£346
million) of environmental benefits between 2007 and mid-2012,
but again these figures represented on-going projects and would
increase over time; and
- the efficiency achieved by Marco Polo I, measured
as a ratio of outputs (tonne-kilometre) to inputs (€ in committed
or paid budget) in 2003-06 was 597 for paid funds and 743 in committed
funds.
11.7 The Commission also notes other important
factors:
- the uptake of the Marco Polo
programme is not entirely satisfactory;
- introduction of audit certificates in 2010, has
facilitated verification of the quantities of freight transported
and has decreased the risk of miscalculation and alleged fraud,
but increased the administrative burden;
- the modal shift approach is not attractive for
insular Member States with limited modal shift potential; and
- there may be some deadweight in the programme,
so some of the projects would have gone ahead without the funding.
11.8 The Commission concludes that:
- based on the achieved results
and taking account of the evolving policy context, the Marco Polo
II programme will be discontinued;
- instead a new scheme, which takes account of
the lessons learned from the Marco Polo programmes, will be integrated
within the revised TEN-T programme and funded from the Connecting
Europe Facility;[54]
and
- this will contribute in particular to the efficient
management and use of transport infrastructure, allowing deployment
of innovative and sustainable freight transport services on the
multimodal core network, which is supposed to serve the most important
European traffic flows.
The Government's view
11.9 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State,
Department for Transport (Stephen Hammond), says that:
- the Government is broadly supportive
of measures to encourage modal shift from road transport;
- it notes, however, that, while the Marco Polo
schemes have delivered a significant amount of modal shift, the
programmes have fallen short of the amounts anticipated and that
much of the allocated funds were not used;
- it therefore supports the decision not to continue
the Marco Polo programme in its current form; and
- it will endeavour to ensure that any successor
scheme is as effective as possible and provides good value for
money.
Conclusion
11.10 Whilst clearing this document, we draw
it to the attention of the House in relation to the Commission's
sensible reaction to the evidence that the Marco Polo programmes
have not been wholly successful.
52 See http://ec.europa.eu/transport/logistics/freight_logistics_action_plan/action_plan_en.htm. Back
53
See http://ec.europa.eu/transport/modes/maritime/motorways_sea/. Back
54
(33275) 15629/11 + ADDs 1-2 (33302) 16176/11 + ADDs 1-2: see
HC 428-xliii (2010-12), chapter 2 (7 December 2011) and HC
Deb, 19 January 2012, cols. 909-938. Back
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