Text tabled : B7-0344/2010

  João Ferreira (GUE/NGL), in writing. − (PT) The resolution regrets the various Member States’ delay in implementing the three first railway package directives, as this delay is preventing fair competition in the railway market. As a result of this, the actual objective of this package is once again condemned: to open up rail transport, especially that of freight, to competition and private interests, as a first step towards the entire liberalisation of the sector at EU level. It is up to the Member States to decide on the areas in which they should perform their social duties through public services, and also on the way in which these public services should be organised. This is a sovereign choice of the people that must be respected. We are therefore opposed to all kinds of antidemocratic enforcement of measures that conflict with the interest of the people, such as the one this resolution clearly embodies.

Liberalisation is the cause of, and not the solution to, the principal problems of the railway sector, particularly of all those relating to the quality and accessibility of the service and the rights of workers. It is vital to put a stop to and reverse the persistent policies that dismantle and shrivel the public transport sector, with a view to surrendering it to the profit logic of the large private interests. In this case it is above all a sector of strategic importance for the future from both an energy and an environmental perspective.