15 
particular by providing appropriate infrastructures and incentives complying with 
market principles, without discrimination on grounds of nationality". 
During five years of negotiation, the working group tried in vain to establish a widely 
acceptable draft for a Transport Protocol. The most critical point was the Article on road 
and railway traffic. Finally, in June 1995, Switzerland resigned from the chairmanship 
of the working group because it did not see any further possibility to continue the 
blocked negotiations on the level of experts. But even on the level of ministers, who met 
at the 4 th Alpine Conference in Brdo a common solution was impossible to find. 
In the absence of any official negotiations, it was up to non-governmental organisations 
to fill in the gap and to re-launch the discussions. Following different diplomatic 
offensives, the 5 th Alpine Conference in Bled took the decision on 16 October 1998 to 
start a second negotiation process concerning the Transport Protocol. This time, 
Liechtenstein took over the chairmanship of the working group. 
Starting in March 1999, the working group held four negotiation meetings in 
Liechtenstein. In mid-March 2000, the Chairman of the working group sent a final 
proposal to the Standing Committee. The last remaining disagreements concerning 
Article 11 on the prohibition of new trans-Alpine high-capacity roads were settled at the 
Standing Committee meeting on 29-31 March 2000 in Chäteau-d'Oex. After 
harmonising its different linguistic versions, the Protocol was finally signed at the 6 th 
Alpine Conference on 30/31 October 2000 in Lucerne by 7 of the 9 contracting parties. 
Slovenia signed later, on 6 August 2002, the European Community's signature is still 
outstanding 52 . 
According to the opinion of Näscher 53 , the Chairman of the second working group in 
charge of the Transport Protocol, this success was mainly due to the fact that, in the 
beginning of the negotiations, the focus was laid on the precise definition of the most 
controversial terms, such as "inter-Alpine traffic", "trans-Alpine traffic", "high-capacity 
roads" etc. These definitions now can be found in Article 2 of the Transport Protocol. 
52 See supra, note 40. 
53 See supra, note 51.