Ramon Tremosa i Balcells (ALDE). - Mr President, because of the lack of results from the First Railway Package in opening the railway markets, the Commission has presented this Fourth Railway Package. Its objective is to tackle the lack of efficiency and remove barriers to a free circulation of rail transport services. Today the fact is that we still do not have a single railway market in the EU.

Ever since the beginning of the negotiations on the PSO dossier I said that, for Liberals, the status quo was not an option. I stressed that we had to act now. We have to open the market as soon as possible through, for example, mandatory tendering of public service contracts. In my view, this was the only big change towards market opening.

As Liberals, we were quite supportive of the initial Commission proposal whose aim was to establish a competitive tendering procedure for public service contracts as a general rule across the EU from 2019. Member States could only continue to award contracts directly up to 2019. However, the rapporteur and the socialist shadow did not share in this pressure for change. Mr[nbsp ]Grosch introduced a retrospective efficiency criterion in order to justify the continuation of directly awarded contracts by the competent authority. According to experts, this is very difficult to measure and control practically, and I do not believe change will come with this system.

I am satisfied with the reciprocity clause. This principle is important in order to limit the distortion of competition in the rail market. This principle should apply not only to Member States, but also to companies from third countries.

In general I do not believe that this regulation, amended in this manner, could contribute to the opening and improving of domestic passenger transport. So, as we did in the Committee on Transport and Tourism, I will recommend to the Liberals that they abstain in plenary on the PSO dossier.