Red carpets all over Europe

When the French journal Transmondia dedicated a special issue to Europe in 1958, the German transport minister Hans-Christoph Seebohm wrote a short note on the role of transport in European unification. History, Seebohm claimed, had demonstrated that transport was a helpful tool in bringing about national unification. He predicted that Europe could count on the collaboration of transport in similar ways. Seebohm's words came at a time of optimism regarding European integration. The Treaty of Rome, founding the European Economic Community (EEC), had been signed the year before. The Treaty reserved an entire title to transport issues, giving it a relatively firm basis vis-à-vis other policy areas. The most ambitious aim was to formulate a common transport policy (CTP) in due course. This constituted a logical step in the integration process for most actors at the time. They thought the transport sector was destined to take European integration to the next level.

Despite this general feeling the CTP became an obdurate irritant continuously reminding all involved of the limits to integration for almost thirty years. Negative qualifications of the CTP abound. In 1972 former European Commission President Walter Hallstein called it the “ironical side” of European integration, claiming that against the odds it had remained in “a state of old-fashioned pastoral seclusion.” In 1980 Kenneth Gwilliam described the difficulties of establishing a CTP as “a mounting source of frustration.” In 1983 Jurgen Erdmenger remarked “Time and again the common transport policy has been the saddest chapter in the history of European integration.”

Increasingly dissatisfied with the failure of the CTP the European Parliament decided to involve the European Court of Justice. It originally intended to take both the European Commission and the European Council to court for failing to develop the CTP, but Transport Director-General John Steele convinced Parliament that the European Commission had done all it could to make the CTP.