Report: 'EU transport policies failing on climate'

The EEA criticises the softening of the EU's policy on dealing with transport volumes. Professor Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of the EEA, said: "The mid-term review [of the Transport White Paper] changes the focus from managing transport demand to addressing negative side-effects. This change in focus means that transport demand growth is no longer explicitly identified as one of the main environmental issues within the transport sector." 

She stressed: "We cannot deal with the increasing GHG emissions, noise pollution and landscape fragmentation caused by transport without dealing with the increasing traffic across the spectrum...Technical advances, such as cleaner, more fuel-efficient engines are very important but we cannot innovate our way out of the emissions problem from transport." 

UITP-EuroTeam Director Brigitte Ollier agreed: "We need to reduce the volume of traffic. Technology alone cannot provide a solution, we have to change people's behaviour too," she said, suggesting that the EU should set non-binding targets for all member states, to reduce car traffic by 1% annually over the next five years. 

However, the International Road Transport Union (IRU)  believes that investing in new road infrastructure is part of the solution: "Limited infrastructure causes traffic jams with growing aggravation…Clearing bottlenecks, building new infrastructure and making existing road systems work more efficiently helps reduce the environmental impact of city roads." 

The European Road Federation (ERF) said: "There is no reason to expect CO2 emissions to decrease at the same rate in all sectors." It underlined that, according to the Stern Eeport, the economic cost of CO2 reduction would be minimised with a tax of about €20-25 per tonne of CO2 and adds: "The specific taxes already paid by the road transportation sector in most European countries represent about ten times the amount. Road transport, therefore, is spearheading the battle for CO2 reduction and if its lead were followed by all other sectors of the economy then CO2 emissions would be under control." 

Green NGO Transport and Environment (T&E) underlines the fact that "if transport emissions had not increased since 1990 but rather stabilised, the overall reduction of GHG in the EU-25 (including the emissions from international aviation and shipping which are not covered by the Kyoto Protocol) would have been -8.1% instead of -2.7%". 

Greens/EFA MEPs Michael Cramer and Eva Lichtenberger said: "We need a major shift in approach to how we get around. Ending direct subsidies for climate-damaging transport modes, such as for road construction, must be a priority but we also need to internalise the external environmental costs of transport." Green MEP Caroline Lucas, the European Parliament's rapporteur on climate change and aviation, added: "We need to end indirect subsidies for airlines - such as the lack of tax on kerosene. If there is to be an emissions-trading scheme for the sector, it must be a separate one with rigorous caps so the true environmental cost of flying is reflected in the end price."