It will set a 0.2% sulphur limit for marine fuels for ships using inland waterways or at berth in EU ports.

To put this directive into perspective, recreational craft in the EU are responsible for less than half of 1% of all exhaust emissions in the Union and if it is the case that this regulation turns out to have severe impacts on small boat owners, driving them unnecessarily off the waterways, then sadly this will merely increase disenchantment with Europe among many of our citizens.

The most important proposals on which Council decisions are urgently needed include (with the date of their first proposal): Eurovignette (1996), Switzerland transport accord (1998) liberalisation of rail freight and international passenger traffic (1995), multilateral agreement on inland waterways with the countries of eastern and central Europe (1996) weight standards for heavy good vehicles (1994) air traffic control (proposal for mandate 1996), and harmonisation of driving bans (1998).

However, let's not forget that over the same period, we have added at least 94,000 new powered boats, plus unaccounted-for non-powered vessels, to Ontario's waterways.

The federation is also active with local authorities in the management of local navigation challenges, such as ice navigation, or specific waterways which require specific traffic management measures.

The Commission proposes the following priority actions as meeting these general criteria: - studies and preparatory work - construction of a combined transport network based on the results of a study which is now under way - development of new telecommunication and teleinformation technologies to improve traffic management and information to drivers - improvement of the Paris-Madrid-Barcelona-Lisbon-Porto-Algeciras road and rail transit routes - improvement of infrastructure associated with the Channel Tunnel - construction of a high-speed rail line between Paris, London, Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne (1) COM (88) 340 ./. - 2 - - impro ...[+++]vement of the north-south transit link in Ireland to serve the ports of Larne, Belfast, Dublin and Rosslare - modernisation of the north-south inland waterway netweork between the Netherlands, Belgium and France - construction of the `Scandinavian link' - modernisation of the transit routes between Southern Germany/Italy- Greece - international links in frontier areas - improvement of other Alpine transit routes, especially into Italy Financial assistance A declaration that a particular project is of European importance would make it eligible for support from the Community funds allocated for transport infrastructure and from other Community sources of capital.