The Board of sustainable transport group Transport & Environment (T&E) has today announced William Todts as its new Executive Director. He succeeds Jos Dings, who this week leaves the position after 13 years.
A study by the respected Öko-Institut in Germany says Europe needs to slash its transport emissions by 94% by 2050. That's what it takes to avoid catastrophic 2 degree warming. Meanwhile, EU governments – particularly Italy and Poland – are trying to destroy the already inadequate target of -30% by 2030.
The citizens-led campaign to reduce air pollution in Milan has spread to Rome, with the NGO behind the ‘NO2 – no thanks’ campaign publishing figures on dangerous air quality in the Italian capital, as well as more detailed information about Milan. The figures focus on the health impacts, but in Rome they also highlight the increased threat of erosion to some of the city’s greatest monuments, including the Colosseum.
When we talk about transport’s climate problem, we usually talk about cars, trucks, planes and ships as the big issues. But, of course, they’re only part of the story. The heart of the problem is not the vehicles or the mobility they provide, but the pollution they cause by burning oil.
Europe’s chief negotiator on the UK’s exit from the EU has insisted that Britain must agree to abide by EU environmental rules if it wants access to the internal market. Speaking at a special debate organised by the Group of 10 leading Brussels-based environmental groups (G10) earlier this month, Michel Barnier said the UK must agree to a ‘non-regression clause’ being included in its post-Brexit trade agreement with the 27-member bloc.
Countries will meet at the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law this week, in the UN’s famous New York City building, to discuss modernising the mechanism that enables foreign firms to sue governments for what they perceive as unfair policy measures that can harm future profits. This is commonly known as investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS. The European Commission’s proposal to reform this archaic system will form the core of the discussions.
The following document is T&E's response to the European Ombudsman's public consultation on transparency of legislative work within Council preparatory bodies (01/2/2017). It consists of the nine questions below.
An enforceable set of sustainable development requirements should be written into all free trade agreements that the EU concludes. That is the recommendation from a paper by T&E which draws on research conducted two years ago when discussions on the ‘TTIP’ EU-US trade deal were at their height.
The following document accompanies T&E’s response to the European Commission public consultation to support the evaluation of the European Environment Agency (EEA) and its European Environment Information and Observation Network (EIONET).
This short response is to be read alongside our response to the multiple choice consultation question.
EU environment ministers today decided to weaken Europe’s proposed new climate law, the Effort Sharing Regulation, and instead called for loopholes and flexibilities that would result in a net increase of carbon emissions. Sustainable transport group Transport & Environment (T&E) said it’s now up to MEPs and the European Commission to resist national governments’ watering down of the draft in order to prevent a net emissions increase of 38 megatonnes of CO2 (Mt CO2e) compared to the EU’s 2005 emissions. [1]