The Common Transport Policy

The Common Transport Policy (CTP) of the Commission of the European Communities is one of the three common policies specifically mentioned in article 3 of the Treaty of Rome, the other two being external commerce and agriculture. Transport has a special status as one of the foundations of the Community and was seen at the outset as both a means of achieving European integration and of accelerating economic development. The underlying philosophy of the CTP is one which reinforces the importance of free market mechanisms and the narrowest of views about operator-oriented costs and benefits, together with a poorly developed sense of transport’s links with the wider economic and social environment. The CTP has evolved through several metamorphoses in its thirty-year life since 1957, and in spite of its strong ideological base in free market thinking, it has shifted ground in response to pragmatic and political considerations.