Question No. 149 Mr. Bill Casey: With respect to rail passengers communicating with the Canadian Transportation Agency regarding improvements to the Renaissance rail cars, owned and operated by VIA Rail Canada, how many: (a) from all parts of Canada, have concerns regarding limited amounts of space aboard the Renaissance rail car; (b) have originated from Atlantic Canada and travel on the Halifax to Montreal rail line; (c) have noted concerns about the purchase of a rail car designed for European rail networks being used on the Canadian rail network; and (d) are senior citizens?

do nothing, which would mean that EU Member States would continue to have highly diversified car tax systems and that individuals encountering problems such as double taxation as a result of the interaction of these different systems might have to take their case as far as the European Court of Justice in order to remedy this retain existing taxation systems but introduce a system of refund of registration tax so that at least double taxation is prevented when a car is transferred from one Member State to another phase out registration tax gradually, since registration tax is the main obstacle to the free movement and transfer of passeng ...[+++]er cars within the Internal Market, with the application of a registration tax refund system in the meantime, and introduce a new tax structure linked to CO2 emissions or reduce registration tax to a level that does not exceed 10% of the pre-tax price of the car which would at least tackle the excessive and disproportionate payment of registration tax.

The car tax-related problem most frequently faced by private individuals is that registration tax must normally be paid a second time when a car is moved from one Member State to another without a permanent change of residence (for example, when someone buys a second-hand car in another EU Member State to take advantage of lower prices there and brings it back to his own country or moves his car to another Member State where he has a second home and leaves it there.) This is despite the fact that registration tax has already been paid in the first Member State and is not refunded by that Member State. Furthermore, the residual car values ...[+++] applied for the purposes of calculating that second registration tax are often excessive which results in disproportionately high registration tax.

In its present form, the request for waiver of immunity seems unacceptably precise and indeed the documents of the case seem to indicate that no attention has been paid to the recommendation for the request of waiver to be taken forward only on the basis of a more specific statement, concerning places and persons involved.

The issue of immunity and the request for waiver relates only to the issue of whether the Court may issue binding orders restricting the MEPs' freedom of movement, or their freedom in making contact with other persons.

On the basis of a new report drawn up following a monitoring mission in Greece, a decision on waiving border checks at its borders within the Schengen area met with political consensus at the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 2 December 1999. Checks on persons at internal borders were officially waived, as anticipated, as of 26 March 2000.