Note: Speeches are reproduced in the language of presentation or in English if the spoken language was neither English, French nor Spanish.

• Xavier Jordana, Minister for City Planning and Regional Development (Andorra)
• Francisco H. L. Carneiro, Minister of Public Works (Angola)
• Petar Moutaftchiev, Minister for Transport and Communication (Bulgaria)
• Julie Boulet, Minister of Transportation (Canada - Quebec)
• Manuel Inocencio Sousa, Minister of State for Infrastructure and Transport, Minister of the Sea, responsible for Fishing (Cape Verde)
• Francisco Unda Toriello, Minister for Communication, Infrastructure and Housing (Guatemala)
• Thierno Oumar Bah, Minister for Public Works, City Planning and Housing (Guinea)
• Hiroaki Taniguchi, Vice-minister for Engineering Affairs, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (Japan)
• Claude Wiseler, Minister for Civil Service and Administrative Reform, Minister of Public Works (Luxemburg)
• Lamido Moumouni Sem, Minister of Infrastructure (Niger)
• Liv Signe Navarsete, Minister of Transport (Norway)
• Lubomir Vazny, Minister for Transport and Postal and Telecommunications Service (Slovakia)
• Leif Zetterberg, Secretary of State attached to the Minister of Communication (Sweden)
• Camiel Eurlings, Minister of Transport, Public Works and Water Management (The Netherlands)
• Kokouvi Dogbe , Deputy Minister to the Presidency of Republic, responsible for Infrastructure, Transport, Postal and Telecommunications Service and Technological Innovation (Togo)
• Tom Harris, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State within Ministry of Transport (United Kingdom)

To begin with I can tell you that so far, all studies that we have conducted in the Netherlands show that road pricing benefits the environment. Various types of road pricing that we have investigated all leads to reduced concentrations of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and fine particles.

Let me share some facts and figures with you. The latest scientific report, published only last week shows clearly that the introduction of a so-called "flat kilometer charge" (always the same price per kilometer) will have the biggest impact on the most congested part of the national Dutch motorway network. With an average reduction in the amount of driven kilometers of no less than 10% and if we add to this flat kilometer charge, that in fact even increases by another 5%. So ladies and gentlemen, this instrument tackles congestion where its problem is at its most.

The overall economic benefits of road pricing by means of a kilometer charge amount to 26.5 billion euros but mind you, that has a staggering effect on a relatively small country like the Netherlands. Furthermore, the positive results of a kilometer charge in terms of a CO2 emission reduction are estimated to be in the range of a 10-18% reduction. So I am in no doubt that road pricing can help us to improve the environment. But I should also point out that the Netherlands is a small country surrounded by much bigger neighbors. We've had to deal with environmental issues beyond our national borders. For us, mobility and its impact on the environment are for us, in essence international issues. So if we were to remain the only country to introduce national road pricing, its impact would be just a drop in the ocean.

International problems, ladies and gentlemen, call for international solutions. That is why it is so important to share ideas here today and in other locations and to help each other truly to tackle and solve these issues. Of course we already do co-operate closely at EU European level. For me, successful co-operation really stresses an importance on sharing ideas, help each other solve these problems and also really discuss the solutions at events like this.

I am very delighted to take part in this conference, not just to share the lessons learnt from my country so far, but to listen and learn from your experiences. One lesson that we did learn is that the environmental case is a strong case also in the'PR' towards the general public. As you may know, road pricing has long been very controversial in my country. So far, the truly main obstacle in introducing road pricing, the per kilometer pricing project, has been a lack of public support. That problem is much more from the man than from the technical problems that could easily be tackled.

Other initiatives that have tried to introduce road pricing have really failed, especially because of fierce public opposition and in this respect; the situation in the Netherlands is very comparable to the situation in all of your countries. Let me take you shortly back into our history.

Road pricing was first proposed in the Netherlands in some 20 years ago. In 1988, the Dutch government started making plans for electronic charging. Since then, so many governments have launched various initiatives until finally in 2005 all of them failed because of strong resistance from the public and consequently from the politicians. But in that year, we decided to make a fresh start and this time, from a truly different perspective.

People needed to see how urgent the problem was if we were to get and keep their support. In other words, the pain needed to be worth the gain. For the Dutch, I can assure you, the pain is now very clear. If we do nothing, our country will seize up, we could seriously harm the economy and recent years have shown all too clearly that road congestion also harms the environment as well. Hundreds of kilometers of congestion everyday in a small country like the Netherlands is very damaging to the environment indeed.

Especially, congestion seriously harms the quality of life of many people and with this knowledge; we created a breakthrough by successfully creating a new national platform. Representatives from all the relevant interest groups and the tiers of government but creating this national platform, I can assure you was no easy task. It's hard enough to get parties with contradictory interests around the same table; it is even harder to get them to agree and to get them to stick to the agreement.

This national platform drew up an advisory report addressing both the economic and the environmental problems caused by road congestion. It also set out a framework for possible solutions. The result has been support from both public and private interests.

The environmental issue was addressed by proposing the kilometer pricing system whereby the motorists truly pay according to use. It also proposes varying these kilometer prices according to the time and the place of the journey as well as the environmental burden of the vehicle.

What this means first of all is that motorists on busy roads in the rush hour will pay more than those on country roads in off peak hours. Secondly, it means that cars that cause more pollution will be more expensive to drive than cleaner cars. The aim of course is to persuade motorists to drive more clean and fuel-efficient cars. This is the only way in fact that densely populated countries such as the Netherlands can beat air pollution and noise nuisance.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think it's important to emphasize here that the aim is not to make money. Also, this is very important; we don't want to take money from the mobility. We want a road pricing policy that is a truly fair and transparent system in which citizen's pay for use of their cars and not so much for the ownership of their cars. I think this is the true key to public support, a fair system, not a kind of extra taxation so by reducing the fixed costs and in the meantime increasing the variable charges, frequent road users will end up paying more whereas the overall majority of the population will benefit financially.

I should add that from a Dutch perspective, a kilometer charge is particularly appropriate on publicly financed roads. And you can add to this obviously the option of introducing toll systems to collect money to build roads privately, but in our country the roads are publicly financed.

And out of the advisory report, I have made a commitment that in my term in office I will take a meaningful and irreversible step towards introducing road pricing in the Netherlands. We are currently taking talks with the relevant interest groups about how we are going to do this.

To come to a conclusion of this short introduction into the Dutch road pricing policy after 20 years of painful discussion, we hope that we are now on the brink of starting off a fair road pricing system. But after 20 difficult years, I think we have learned 3 important lessons and these three I would like to share with you here today.

First of all, if you want to introduce road pricing, you need public support. In this context, the principle for paying for the use of the car and not the ownership and also, adding the environmental argument both help maintaining public support. The second lesson, if you face public opposition, get the relevant interest groups together and work together to overcome the public fears. And third, vary road pricing according to the time and place of the journey and the environmental burden of the vehicle.

Ladies and gentlemen, it will still take a few years before motorists in the Netherlands pay according to use because the system in truly complex and can't be introduced overnight. At the moment, my government is working hard to take the first step to introducing this road pricing system in our country.

This autumn already, we will reach a final decision so now it's too early to say what the system in the first step will really look like but one thing is certain, varying the charge according to vehicles environmental burden will most definitely be a part of this new approach. I sincerely do hope that the introduction of vehicle kilometer pricing in the Netherlands will encourage other countries in Europe to follow, to follow this example making it an even more effective tool. We have discussed this often on various platforms, often regarding technical problems but the real problem is public support combing fighting congestions and improving the environment at once.

And I think this approach should be "all for one and one for all", as a famous Frenchman once said.

Thank you.

L'énoncé « le Québec et les changements climatiques un défi pour l'avenir », prévoit la réalisation de 24 actions, dont 9 touchent le secteur des transports, le secteur qui contribue en grande partie aux émissions de gaz à effet de serre. Près de 75 % des sommes allouées à la réalisation du plan d'action serviront au financement d'actions en transport. Ces actions concernent particulièrement le transport collectif et actif, les projets intermodaux et l'efficacité énergique du transport des marchandises.

Dans une seconde étape, toujours dans un contexte de développement durable et de la volonté de réduction de gaz à effet de serre, le Québec a adopté une stratégie touchant le secteur de l'énergie. L'énergie pour construire le Québec de demain, la stratégie énergétique du Québec 2006-2015 a été rendue publique en mai 2006. Cette stratégie vise une diminution de 10 % de la consommation de produits pétroliers d'ici 2015. Elle mise sur des mesures incitant la population à modifier ses habitudes de consommation de l'énergie fossile. Ici encore, le transport collectif et le transport actif représentent des pistes de solutions efficaces.

La recherche et le développement en équipement et en énergie propre s'inscrit également dans les mesures porteuses d'avenir. Afin de lancer l'ensemble de ces actions, une redevance sur les hydrocarbures établie de façon équitable et appliquée uniformément aux entreprises émettrices de gaz à effet de serre sera mise en place.

Le gouvernement du Québec reconnaît ici que les instruments économiques tels que les redevances permettent de créer des outils efficaces pour réduire la consommation de produits pétroliers et les émissions de gaz à effet de serre.

Enfin, tant les entreprises du secteur de l'énergie maîtrise de gaz à effet de serre ainsi que les utilisateurs de combustibles et de carburants contribueront directement à l'atteinte de nos objectifs de réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serre et de consommation de produits pétroliers.

Vous constatez que le transport collectif est au cœur de la mise en œuvre de ces deux stratégies. Or, pour s'assurer de l'efficacité de l'action gouvernementale en matière de transports collectifs et pour structurer cette action, le gouvernement du Québec s'est doté en juin 2006 d'une politique sur le transport collectif.

La politique québécoise du transport collectif s'appuie sur une répartition équitable des efforts de tous les intervenants, gouvernement, municipalités, autorités organisatrices de transports collectifs, usagers, automobilistes et employeurs.

Les efforts toucheront six volets.

1. D'abord un milieu urbain. L'amélioration de l'offre de service en transport en commun représente un élément clé de cette politique. L'objectif est d'accroître l'achalandage de 8 % d'ici 2012.
2. Le deuxième volet. Le Québec se compose également de plusieurs régions dont la contribution se traduit par la mise en place de projets avant-gardistes de transports collectifs optimisant ainsi l'usage des flottes de véhicules publics.
3. Le troisième volet touche directement les personnes à mobilité réduite. Des programmes visant à l'amélioration de l'accessibilité des services de transport par taxis et interurbain par autocars sont donc prévus.
4. Vient ensuite tout le domaine du transport actif. Les déplacements à pied et à vélo doivent être favorisés par l'adaptation des aménagements urbains et par différentes mesures incitatives. Les employeurs seront invités à mettre en place des mesures encourageant leurs employés à opter pour des modes de transport autres que l'auto solo.
5. Nous pensons également à l'introduction auprès de tous les partenaires de transports collectifs terrestres de nouvelles technologies visant à améliorer l'efficacité énergétique dans le transport routier des personnes. Plusieurs mesures incitatives sont donc en élaboration.
6. Le gouvernement du Québec contribuera aussi à la modernisation des infrastructures et des équipements de transport en commun. Le métro de Montréal et le renouvellement des flottes d'autobus seront particulièrement visés.

Le Québec fait ainsi un choix de société et s'assure que l'ensemble des utilisateurs contribue à l'atteinte des objectifs. Le principe utilisateur/payeur terme de la séance d'aujourd'hui est donc appliqué collectivement plutôt qu'individuellement.

Ensemble la stratégie énergétique du Québec et le plan d'action québécois sur les changements climatiques introduisent le principe d'une redevance sur les hydrocarbures qui sert à financer l'ensemble des actions visant la réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serre et de la consommation de produits pétroliers. Une partie des actions touche le développement du transport collectif, qu'une politique vient définir de façon détaillée.

Toutes ces initiatives s'inscrivent dans l'esprit de la loi sur le développement durable. La cohérence de l'action gouvernementale en matière de changement climatique, d'énergie et de transports collectifs nous semble donc acquise. Les redevances sur les hydrocarbures opéraient comme un instrument judicieux et équitable nous permettant la mise en œuvre des actions porteuses d'avenir.

Merci de votre attention et bon congrès à tous.

Ladies and gentleman, first of all, I would like to thank the French organizing committee has put road pricing on the agenda and also for bringing together so many high officials from all over the world.

Most cities experience everyday traffic jams, together with increasing social problems and noise. This is also the situation in Norway. Economists have recommended road pricing to solve congestion related issues for roads for decades now so why hasn't there been more action to solve this problem? Of course the argument is that congestion charging helps by solving two problems simultaneously;
it improves the traffic flow and consequently reduces air pollution.

My country Norway, has experience from numerous road pricing schemes in the sense of toll roads and urban rings, tunnels, bridges, highways and public transport infrastructure have been financed and completed sooner than they would have been with less public spending. And this is now an important part of our road infrastructure policy.

My government has introduced various environmental policy measures in the road transport sector using the pricing mechanism.

For instance, the tax system is designed to enhance the use of alternative low emission fuels that makes buying a car that is more polluting and has a higher energy consumption costs a lot more than other cars with lower energy consumptions. This policy has already been very successful.

Further, we recently presented a new white paper on climate policy with proposal for complete new measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One of these measures is to invite the largest towns to co-operate in reducing local emissions, especially those from road traffic.

Many politicians cry for a better public transport service and lower fares but they ignore that most people change their transport habits very slowly. I believe that we need both the carrot and unfortunately the stick.

That is why I regard it different that road pricing in the sense of congestion charging as an important and adequate instrument for the future. We have seen that congestion charging proved to work very well for traffic management programs in cities like Stockholm and London.

But in order to have success, good information is crucial and I think that it is important for acceptance that the user's perspective the following:

• a) the problem before introducing road policy;
• b) improve conditions for alternative modes. For example, a better public transport service, I think that is very important; and,
• c) Less congestion and more predictability on the road network.

On a national level, the legal basis for congestion charging is already prepared in a way. Over the last weeks, I have also received very positive shift in the public opinion during the election campaign. I think that we had in the last weeks but according to the subsidiary principle, local political will is an important condition for the introduction of road pricing.

I therefore wait for further steps from the municipalities while keeping an eye on the re-development around us and I know one thing for sure, the future will bring both changes and challenges. Not least in the road transport sector. I think we owe our children and grand children to act now and we have to be ready, we have to be on time.

In terms of lessons nationally, the government in Britain is no different, it has twin challenges in terms of the need - the demand for more road building combined with the resistance to more road building and for some years now, experts have been insisting that the way around this is to move to a form of national road pricing. The problem is that no country so far has been successful in moving to the national road pricing scheme so nobody's quite sure how that can be done.

Initially, our strategy is to invite local cities regions in England to come forward with proposals for road pricing combined with improvements in local transport and we've supported those bids with substantial sums of Central Government Funds because we believe quite strongly that if you are to impose any form of road pricing, that has to be balanced with the carrot as my colleague said earlier on, of improved public transport. We've now received one significant proposal from Greater Manchester; we expect to receive another one in the near future before the end of this year. We hope those two schemes will be up and running by 2011 and those of course will be in addition to the London Congestion charge.

I think at this point it is important to mention that this is probably where the United Kingdom departs from the course of other countries in that we see road pricing primarily as a traffic management tool a way of reducing congestion rather than in principle a tool for improving the economy.

Now, if it's successful, that will have a knock on beneficial effect on the environment. We see road pricing as a way of managing traffic and reducing congestion so people will use busier roads at less busier times and that is the priority for us.

As I said earlier on, no one has yet demonstrated that a national road pricing scheme will actually be possible. For us, what is important is intermodality. I'm not sure how that translates. What is important is that people are going to be charges in two different parts of the country but they will only receive one bill for that and that produces, that presents us with, major technical and political challenges.

We will shortly be launching a demonstration project through which we'll invite a private consortia to prove that distance based charging can be used reliably and crucially, without imposing problems as regard to people's right to privacy. Because the civil rights lobby is understandably concerned about any national road pricing scheme. Obviously, the key to establishing any possible future scheme is what the public think. I would think it's fair to say that in the United Kingdom, the public are yet to be convinced but that is our job as politicians to try and convince them.

The congestion charging system in Stockholm city was first implemented on a trial basis and the main reason was of course, how to handle the traffic congestion and improve the environmental situation in the centre of Stockholm.

The congestion charging system was the first of its kind in Sweden, and skepticism was widespread among the general public and also among the politicians and political parties. We also have to bear in mind that in Sweden, car drivers are not used to paying special fees except for the yearly tax and the tax on fuel and except when we go to Denmark and Norway on the beaches.

And the success was obvious. During the period, road traffic decreased by almost 20%, particularly in the city access and the access of roads. And consequently, of course the travel times were considerably reduced to the inner city and the environment benefited. The emissions from the roads were reduced from between 8 - 14% and this is about the same experience as the Dutch activities.

Of course the people took the bus and the metro instead of the cars. We had an increase of about 40,000 people daily using the public transport instead of the cars and even the retailers were not negatively affected and this was a fear before the project started.

After this trial we had a referendum and you can see a change in the opinion in the city of Stockholm, and the majority of the voters were in favor of the city. You can see, I think the change was mainly because of the positive effects of the traffic and the environmental effects. Of course also, the technical system worked well from day one.

We have now introduced this system on a permanent basis and the main change is that before it was a tax system but now it is a system where we raise the funds to get money to improve the activities for the road network and in some years time, this money can pay the cost for a new ring road and of course, this would be good both for the congestion of the traffic system and also for the environment.

At the same time we also introduced a bonus for people buying environmentally friendly cars and in the last month in Stockholm, one in five cars that were purchased was an environmentally friendly car. So the combination of paying fees and getting the bonus is potential for good success especially in Swedish country. And of course, in the long run, we get on a yearly basis, 500 million SEK to use for the road network and of course that is also important.

You can say that you pay a fee and you get a bonus and I think that is the way you have to handle the general public and I think that's also the same experience as the Dutch minister explained.

This ETC system has been in service since 2001 and 16 million cars are equipped with ETC on-board equipments. ETC users account for the 70% of trips on toll roads.

This has led to the reduction of 160 thousand tons in CO2 emissions, which is a great outcome.

We believe that the ETC system can contribute to the alleviation of global warming by being further utilized.

For example, the ETC system enables tolls to be flexibly adjusted and lowered according to the day and time of use. This can encourage drivers who would have used the congested tolled or non-tolled roads to use non-congested toll roads and can, in turn, result in the reduction of CO2 emissions.

The Minister of Andorra
La plupart des personnes qui sont dans la salle connaissent la principauté d'Andorre, un petit pays situé dans la chaîne des Pyrénées entre la France et l'Espagne au sud.

L'Andorre a seulement 500 km2 et à peu près 80 000 habitants. Il faut dire néanmoins que nous recevons chaque année 10 millions de visiteurs. Si le ministre d'Etat Monsieur Borloo nous a dit il y a un moment que le thème de la route était crucial, pour l'Andorre c'est encore plus crucial car la route est le seul moyen decommunication avec la France et l'Espagne, et c'est donc très important pour la mobilité vis-à-vis des pays voisins.

L'Andorre a fait pendant ces dernières années un effort très important pour la réalisation de nouvelles voies de communication. Nous ne nous sommes pas orientés vers la tarification. C'est très compliqué. Nous étudions en ce moment le financement des infrastructures dont nous avons très besoin au niveau interne :des tunnels, des viaducs et beaucoup de routes, de routes de montagne. L'Andorre est un pays qui est dans une altitude moyenne de 2000 mètres ; c'est un pays avec un hiver très rigoureux, la viabilité hivernale est aussi très importante et nous faisons un effort pour travailler pour le financement à long terme et seront donc très intéressés par les séances sur le financement des investissements routiers par les contrats de longue durée.

Dominique Rousset
Monsieur le Ministre, pourquoi dites-vous que vous n'avez pas choisi la tarification par exemple pour tous ces gens qui traversent votre pays ; d'autres pays je pense à la Suisse le font systématiquement.

The Minister of Andorra
Je dis que nous ne l'avons pas choisi mais je ne dis pas qu'on ne le fera pas au futur. Justement notre gouvernement est en train d'étudier, de réfléchir et d'examiner entre autres cette possibilité. Je suis sûr que notre délégation technique trouvera très intéressantes les séances sur les aspects techniques et stratégiques de la tarification et pourquoi pas. Ce n'est pas un refus absolu.

Je voudrais ici parler de l'expérience de mon pays, le Niger, qui certainement va différer des expériences qui viennent d'être citées. Le Niger est un pays continental qui couvre 1 267 000 km2 et qui est aussi un pays désertique. Le problème routier se pose donc autrement.
Nous avons initié la tarification à travers le péage routier mais aussi par la redevance pétrolière. Nous sommes confrontés au coût très élevé de construction des routes. Non seulement le pays est vaste mais aussi nous avons à faire face à la désertification ; nous devons donc nous battre sur deux terrains. Il faudrait réhabiliter pour rendre pérenne les routes et que l'environnement soit sauvegardé.
Le Niger a opté effectivement non seulement pour la tarification mais aussi pour le contrôle à l'essieu.

C'est une expérience que nous sommes en train de tenter avec les autres pays membres de l'CEA et nous allons certainement retirer beaucoup d'expérience à travers les échanges que nous aurons ici puisque le donner et le recevoir que constituent les différentes expériences des pays surtout développés, nous permettront de prendre en charge certains de nos problèmes.