enough funding but at the same time there has to be a will of national governments to encourage competitive practices. br/>
For the European economy to operate as a Single Market there has to be presence of common transport policy. Simply speaking, many member states consider their national transport issues but undermine the importance of the overall European system of transport network that would connect all areas within the region, bring closer cooperation and greater economic efficiency and success. These is to be achieved through the establishment of so-called Trans-European networks (TENs). Its establishment will require member states to combine with the EU in order to achieve greater coherence. This ought to bring the economic growth and deeper integration within the EU. The main tasks include "better and safer travel at low costs; effective planning in Europe in order to avoid a concentration of population; bridge building towards Eastern Europe in order to step up investment and promote trade "(Barnes, Barnes 98). All these have to be achieved mainly through removing of financial and regulatory obstacles and involving private investors in such issues. What is most believed that effective working of such a network will bring economic and social cohesion. The important thing to be emphasized here is that this idea needs the proper funding coming from all different sources (involving arrangements between public and private sector). In order to achieve the all-European strategy the new routes have to be taken and focus especially on those areas were the coordination between member states and EU authorities is performed badly therefore has to be improved. br/>
For better understanding of the whole issue let's summarize major successes and failures of the EU transport policy. First major success was actually the stressing out the importance of transport policy within the EU as a necessary part for the effective economic integration and therefore making it a part of the EU law. Another significant success could be connected with the increase, during last two decades, of usage of many means of transport mainly road, air, rail, water etc. It could be followed by liberalization of road haulage and civil aviation. The last, but probably most important, success would be the effort to establish Trans-European networks (TENs) which is supposed to provide EU with better economic and social cohesion. However there are several failures that have to be mentioned as well. One of them would be that even though there has been an effort to liberalize the road haulage, this means of transport is most commonly used despite the fact that causes the biggest threat to our environment. There has been complete failure by EU to substitute it with other more ecological means such as air or rail transport. Another significant failure by EU concerns the state aids and ineffective spending on policy issues (eg Air France). This could be followed by the fact that EU did not manage to convince or create greater cooperation between member states and EU authorities therefore leaving the states to take care more of their national interests rather than common European interest. Generally speaking, the EU has created a lot of good proposals and concepts concerning effective trade policy on the paper but it has done much less in converting it into real practices (more important). What is necessary for the future is that EU should find the way how to spend the money devoted tot the trade policy more efficiently and most importantly to find means for applying all these practices that it has on paper in reality so to achieve a real progress in all areas.
Environmental policy
The concept of environment is crucial because it affects all citizens and therefore its presence in the EU legislation is of great importance. Unlike many other policies, the beginning of environmental policy does not go backwards up to the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Its main concern (Importance) was introduced in 1972, were a great amount of amendments, regulations, decisions, directives have been adopted by member states. Afterwards it became the part of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), more precisely in article 2, where its importance is firstly recognized by a EU treaty. Mainly, legislation has been introduced to cover such issues as "Quality of water, waste management, air quality, control of pollution from transport, emission of chemicals, protection of wildlife and countryside, as well as measures to make a legislation work. As a result the EU's environmental policy has an impact on all aspects of life "(Barnes, Barnes 294). It was easy for the EU to put all these aspects on the paper but more difficult to make 15 member states (currently 25) to adopt and practice these in reality. The main aim how to achieve this was through the introduction of different levels of sustainable development pri...
