Democrat January-February 1998 (Number 29)
Brian Denny makes clear who benefits and loses from the
Trans-European road Network System
Road building and the drive for Euro-Federalism have
become the most contentious and controversial issues of the decade.
It will come as no surprise to
Environmentalists have long argued that road building
has been carried out in the interests of big business and does little
to develop local economies or create real jobs. European Union transport
policies have done nothing to change such a view.
Anti-road protests are fast becoming a Europe-wide
phenomenon as EU plans, known as the Trans-European transport Networks
(TEN's), are being implemented.
The architects and driving force behind the networks
is the very powerful road lobby made up of the oil and motor industries
under an umbrella organisation called the European Round Table of
Industrialists (ERT). In fact, the ERT was one of the main lobbying
groups to help the European Commission to prepare the 1992 Trans-European
Road Networks on which the transport plans are based.
The Commission presents the networks as the physical
backbone of the internal market, which forces companies to operate
Europe-wide.
The proposed huge network of motorways and other
transport infrastructure would join these centres and act as distribution
channels to the periphery. Therefore, regions are forced into dependence
on uniform products from centralised production points with such goods
being dispensed from chain store outlets and out-of-town shopping
centres.
Plans include 140 road schemes, 11 rail links, 57
combined transport projects, 26 inland waterway links and an estimated
50% increase in air travel. The estimated cost of this huge exercise
is £ 270,000 million over the next 15 years. As more projects are
added to the plans this cost is likely to rise.
Over the decades, the EU has restructured the landscape
of agricultural production and countries have experienced a dramatic
loss of diversity in produce.
The threat such plans present to local communities,
wildlife and landscapes of outstanding beauty is also self-evident
and are in direct conflict with EU sustainable development and environmental
protection objectives.
A recent GREENPEACE report by John Whitelegg pointed
out that Birmingham had all the motorways anyone could dream of and
yet still suffered from high unemployment and economic stagnation.
In Birmingham, Campaign Against Euro-Federalism members
are actively involved in opposing the proposed Birmingham North Relief
(toll) Road (BNRR) which is designed to make the M6 exclusive for
juggernauts to transport goods. Environmental campaigners have also
successfully blocked plans to lay a dual carriageway across the famous
ancient water meadows that lay in front of Salisbury cathedral.
The ex-socialist countries in eastern and central
Europe are also at risk from EU transport strategies. Previously,
countries like Hungary and Czechoslovakia could base their transport
policy on low-cost strategies, with energy efficiency a priority,
as an integrated part of a planned economy.
Today, transnational corporations are keen to exploit
these new central and east European markets since the expansion of,
mostly German, capital into the region.
The present process of structural adjustment being
carried out from Brussels is being done in the name of "international
competitiveness". However, this process is simply allowing the TNC's
to operate with impunity and only brings with it the spectre of mass
unemployment, declining social services and despair.
And, just as labour and trade union movements across
the EU are campaigning against cuts in the welfare state and other
austerity measures which are built into the Maastricht Treaty, environmental
movements are developing campaigns against European Commission plans
to lay nearly 5,000 miles of motorway over the next five years.
Big versus small
TENs
These plans, enshrined within the Treaty on European
Union (Maastricht), are designed to develop the European Community's
transport system in the interests of the TNC's complete with plans
to privatise Europe's railway services and introduce more toll roads.
European Round Table
Founded in 1983, the ERT represents nearly 50 heads
of industry from the largest transnational corporations in Europe
including Fiat, Shell Oil, Nestle, ICI and Daimler Benz and has easy
access to government leaders and EU politicians in order to promote
its infrastructure plans.
As a result this organisation has already successively
lobbied Brussels to create an internal market for goods within the
EU and promote large-scale investments in transport infrastructure.
Internal Market
Such an arrangement, of course, favours large corporations
with larger production units which can swallow up small, local competitors
with ease. This combination of policies has the effect of reducing
the number of production and distribution centres within the EU, while
concentrating and consolidating wealth and power of the TNC's.
Channels for goods
TENs currently represent over 200 projected labelled
as being of "Community Interest" which receive funding from the EU.
Yet the commission did not consult local or regional authorities,
environmental or community groups, in fact, there was no public consultation
whatsoever. As a result, the networks do not opt for rail and waterways
or for environmentally friendly, integrated public transport systems,
mainly because they are about implementing the needs of big business
and the road lobby.
Costs of plans
But such a strategy destroys successful regional economies,
local cultural diversity and jobs while favouring huge transnational
corporations and consolidates the EU as a economic and political superstate.
One vivid example which follows such a logic is EU agricultural policies,
particularly the CAP, which encourages large-scale production and
regional specialisation.
Landscape
Spain, for instance, now specialises only in typical
Mediterranean products, like wine and fruit, while traditional production
of cereals and potatoes has virtually disappeared.
As these products are now imported into Spain, the
growth in transport activity and the associated increase in costs
and pollution become increasingly unavoidable.
EU traffic estimates reveal a 30 to 50 per cent increase
in cross-border traffic as a direct result of TEN's by the year 2010,
while the total growth in goods transported within the EU is set to
grow by 90 per cent.
After succeeding in its drive for the internal market,
the ERT used its considerable political weight to push its road-building
plans.
EU road-building plans would consume large quantities
of land. In Britain for instance, each mile of motorway requires two
and a half acres of land. The completion of TENs would mean more than
500 square miles of land lost to the transport infrastructure across
Europe.
Environment
Yet, in the face of such evidence, the EU transport
commissioner Neil Kinnock has insisted that the policy will bring
economic and social benefits.
"It will play an important part in easing the job
crisis, be good for the environment and improve the quality of people's
lives," he said.
However, there is very little evidence that continual
road building has produced any of these desired effects.
In fact, it has resulted in rather the opposite, creating
spiralling traffic congestion, increasing air pollution and other
environmental damage.
GREENPEACE report
Therefore, many transport and green campaigners, such
as Alarm UK, Transport 2000 and Friends of the Earth are beginning
to link up with Euro-realist groups across the continent to oppose
the commission's plans.
Birmingham Toll Road
Activists from across Europe are increasingly looking
to Britain to learn from the successes of the British anti-roads protest
movement.
Eastern Europe
It was logical to move huge amounts of material and
people the cheapest way. Therefore the railway system and the public
transport sector had the main share of the industry.
They also did not face the chaos of big business promoting
ever-increasing consumption or the rampant individualism associated
with pure monetarism and the unbridled market economy.
TNCs
As a part of the EU expansion process eastwards the
Commission is imposing a large number of east-west road transport
network projects to replace cheap, efficient public-sector transport
and railway usage.
Ultimately, the main beneficiary of such centralisation
represented by the transport networks is the monopoly capital that
the European Union was created to serve.
The creation of centralised production centres and
the increased need for transport exposes the reality behind the glossy
EU rhetoric that protection of local economies, the environment, lowering
pollution and easing traffic congestion are impossible under policies
such as TEN's.
These plans will, in fact, increase traffic and pollution
at a time when world leaders are admitting that action must be taken
to limit and lower greenhouse gas emissions. If there was ever an
example of how the EU undermines national democratic control of the
economy and in whose interests it serves look no further than its
transport policy.
Competition rules
The alternative is to bring the power of the TNC's
under democratic control in order to protect and develop local and
national economies to build not only relevant transport needs but
to create sustainable jobs and developing stable communities for people
to live in.