The Future of the Common Transport Policy

Abstract

The close equivalence in effect on trade of tariffs and transport costs makes it inevitable that there should be, at the very least, sufficient control and uniformity in the transport policies of the EC member states to prevent them being used as a covert and discriminating way of re-introducing the barriers which the formation of the EC was designed to eliminate. The importance of transport rates in determining the geographical structure of the coal, iron and steel sectors, and their relationships led to their control being an essential and central element in the Treaty of Paris which created the ECSC (see Meade et al, 1962). A pattern for transport policy therefore already existed in the Treaty of Paris when the Treaty of Rome moved the Community forward from a very narrow industrial base to embrace the whole of the economic activities of the member states.