A draft Council regulation on statistical returns of carriage of goods by road is intended to round off current production of harmonized statistical data to ensure the availability of information necessary for the framing, monitoring, controlling and evaluation of the common policy. The draft Regulation will replace Directive 78/546/EEC and 89/462/EEC. It will in particular describe the regions of origin and destination of international intra-Community transport in the same terms as national transport giving a single territorial overview of the common market. The new legislation will take road cabotage into account which is now possible within the internal market. Rapporteur Jean-Pierre BAZIN ( UFE, F) welcomes the proposal.
As the burden will be borne mainly by the national statistical services which will collect the data, the new system will be responsble for codifying the region of origin or destination for transport and journeys. The collection of data on journeys beyond national frontiers will enable it to measure their rate of utilization and hence the real traffic carried by sensitive routes or trans-European corridors. This will greatly assist the implementation of the common transport, regional and environmental policies. Small vehicles, up to 3,5 tonnes payload or 6 tonnes maximum permissible laden weight, will be eliminated from the scope of the instrument.
Rapporteur BAZIN had tabled two amendments. The first concerned the periodic submission of a report to Parliament, based on the data collected. The second concerned the management of the funds allocated to this measure.�