• New rules on buying clean vehicles ‘by the end of the year’

    The Commission has unveiled a consultation paper on urban mobility, despite its influence being severely limited by the subsidiarity principle.

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    Most urban transport issues are resolved at national and local level, but the EU’s transport commissioner Jacques Barrot believes the scale of the problems faced by urban areas means that Europe has a role to play.

    The green paper provides a number of general aims, but the centrepiece of EU involvement is likely to be new rules on public procurement of clean public transport vehicles, one of the only areas in which Europe has direct influence. Barrot has promised revised proposals on this by the end of this year.

    Two years ago the Commission published draft legislation that would have forced public authorities to ensure at least 25% of their new vehicles met an EU ‘enhanced environmentally friendly standard’, but the plans were heavily criticised for being too weak to make any difference, and they have not been taken further.

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