EEA says changes to common transport policy are going in the wrong direction

[mailchimp_signup][/mailchimp_signup]In its annual report on the state of European transport, the EEA says “spiralling demand” for transport is undermining the EU’s overall progress towards meeting its Kyoto emissions target. It says curbing transport demand should remain a key element of European transport policy.

The EEA’s director Jacqueline McGlade said: “We cannot deal with the increasing greenhouse gas emissions, noise pollution and landscape fragmentation caused by transport without dealing with the increasing traffic across the spectrum.”

The “Term” report says European freight transport grew by 43% between 1900 and 2004, increasing much faster than economic growth in 2004 and showing no signs of decoupling. Passenger transport increased by 20% in the period 1990-2003, with aviation up by 96%.

The EEA will publish a detailed paper later this month on transport subsidies, but says around €280 billion is spent annually in Europe on transport subsidies, almost half of which go towards roads.

The report covered the EU’s 25 members from mid-2004, plus Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey.

When the revised policy was published last July, T&E criticised it for abandoning the goal of breaking the link between economic and transport growth. It said this contradicted the EU’s sustainable development strategy, which had been published just six days earlier.

• The chairman of the European Parliament’s transport committee, Paolo Costa, says EU transport policy must be adapted to cope with the uncertain supply of energy, and not enough is being done to move away from unsustainable and polluting transport to cleaner modes. Costa was speaking at a conference held last month to discuss a “mid-term report” by MEPs into the EU’s transport policy launched in 2001.

This news story is taken from the March 2007 edition of T&E Bulletin.