Saturday, 2 May 2009

Rail noise v. railway competitiveness: The Belgian perspective

Just a little piece of high-level EU politics:
"While Belgium recognises that measures should be taken to reduce the adverse effects of railwaynoise at source, it nevertheless insists that such measures must not jeopardise the competitiveness of the railway sector."
(Special statement by Belgium on Item 12 "Greening transport, strategy for the internalisation of external costs and rail noise abatement measures addressing the existing fleet", EU Council meeting 8/9 December 2009 minutes published today)

1 comments:

Jon Worth said...

What?! Belgium!? Competitiveness?! You couldn't make it up... SNCB has a monopoly on national passenger trains still, and the company takes large state subsidies. OK, the trains are cheap but competitive? I think not.