State secretary extended arm of the truck lobby?

Berlin: The secretary of state in the federal transport ministry, Andreas Scheuer, obviously no longer considers the Master Plan for Freight Transport, which was passed by chancellor Angela Merkel’s government in June 2008, to be a set of binding measures. At a national logistics conference on Thursday in Munich, the CSU politician announced that, of the 35 measures agreed in 2008, only between 10 and 20 would be implemented, according to dpa reports. In a letter to the Pro-Rail Alliance at the beginning of March, Scheuer had already announced a “new beginning for transport policies”, saying that he would remove any of the government’s measures that, in his opinion, would lead to freight transport being “hindered or made more expensive”. To justify his actions, obviously independent of his department, Scheuer cited “critical voices” within the road transport lobby, equating their requirements with the needs of the German logistics sector as a whole.

The managing director of the Pro-Rail Alliance, Dirk Flege, on Friday in Berlin criticised the fact that the master plan’s conciliatory spirit, which seeks to link all modes of transport together, was being sacrificed in favour of the roads sector’s own particular interests. Flege pointed out that Scheuer is not only the secretary of state of a ministry, but is also the federal government’s commissioner for logistics. However, in a written parliamentary answer, the government announced in December that it was holding firmly onto all the targets defined in the master plan. “It is scandalous that in the name of the government, freight transport is being equated with heavy good vehicles,” said Flege. “We are stunned. In all seriousness, we are questioning whether some politicians see themselves as the extended arm of the road freight lobby.”

Flege called in the transport ministry to have a rethink and commit itself to the master plan’s original goals. There is no alternative to this “integrated approach”. “If this package of measures is chopped up and plundered in favour of road freight transport, then the master plan is politically dead,” said Flege. He also criticised “the battering caused by the wavering course” that the carefully balanced plan has been subjected to. “Firstly, the new government’s coalition contract contained an agreement to revise the Master Plan for Freight Transport. Then the federal government said “no, not so” and then a short time later, Scheuer announced that only half the measures are acceptable. That is not politics, it is a complete farce.”