The plenary session of the European Committee of the Regions has agreed to require the European institutions to take into account the disadvantages of insularity, as proposed by the Govern de les Illes Balears through an amendment, in the draft opinion adopted Thursday, on the sustainability and greening of freight transport to Europe.
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The European Committee of the Regions approves an amendment to the Balearic Islands
The president of the Government of the Balearic Islands, Marga Prohens, attended today in Brussels, in the European Parliament, on the second day of the plenary session of the European Committee of the Regions, during which the debate and vote on the amendments in the text has been held and the amendment proposed by the Balearic Islands has been approved.
The Government of the Balearic Islands has presented the amendment to this draft opinion to ask the European institutions to pay special attention to territories with geographical and demographic disadvantages, such as the islands, because of the limitations that this imposes both on the infrastructure in these territories and about the possibility of adapting their transport systems and distribution of goods.
The Draft Opinion analyzes different legislative initiatives of the European Commission to meet the commitments of the European Green Pact, and to comply with climate neutrality until 2050, aligned with the objective of decarbonization of the Balearic Islands.
The most relevant aspects are the improvement of the management of European railway infrastructures, the incentivization of low-emission road freight vehicles and the improvement of the information available on greenhouse gas emissions.
The reference regulation is focused on measures for the standardization and interoperability of the common European area, especially cross-border ones. The railway regulation is not applicable in the Balearic Islands, since our network is disconnected from the single railway area.
The fact of being an island means that the transport of goods is fundamentally intermodal, since most of the goods arrive to the Islands by sea, with a subsequent internal distribution by road.
The amendment presented by the Govern aims to make effective the deployment of Article 174 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which establishes that the islands must receive special attention, and thus to convey to the European institutions the importance of taking into account the disadvantages of insularity so that measures are applied when it is necessary to compensate for insularity, whether or not they are outermost regions.
The European initiatives analysed in the opinion are the European Commission’s communication on the greening of freight transport; the proposal for a regulation on accounting for greenhouse gas emissions from transport services; the regulation on the use of railway infrastructure capacity in the single European railway area; the proposal for a directive laying down, for certain road vehicles, the maximum authorised dimensions in national and international traffic and the maximum authorised weights in international traffic; and the proposal for a directive on a support framework for intermodal freight transport.