Press Release

Timmermans must make concrete proposals to deliver a European Green Deal

October 8, 2019

Concrete proposals to clean up transport, the biggest emitter in Europe, will be needed from Frans Timmermans if he is to live up to the positive rhetoric of today’s parliamentary hearing, Transport & Environment (T&E) has said. The nominee Vice-President’s commitment to enforcing and strengthening the car and truck CO2 standards is good news. So is his intention to add shipping to the EU ETS and take action on aviation. However, Mr Timmermans failed to rule out putting road transport emissions in the EU ETS, which would be a distraction and would undermine the Climate Action Regulation – the main driver for climate action at national level.

T&E’s executive director, William Todts, said: “Timmermans rightly calls for the EU to do more, but rhetoric and ambitious targets won’t be enough. We need the Von der Leyen Commission to accelerate the shift to e-mobility and phase out combustion engine vehicles. That means strengthening the vehicle CO₂ standards but also new policies to clean up taxi, bus and other fleets, as well as laws to make batteries greener.

“And we desperately need to kickstart action on airline and shipping emissions where the UN agencies have utterly failed. Strengthening the EU ETS for these sectors is a start, but we’ll need to do much more if we want to see zero emission ships or e-kerosene powered planes take off.”

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