Memo: Marco Polo: Fresh air for European freight transport

Europe’s road network suffers from ever-increasing congestion, increasing the time lost by road-users and worsening environmental pollution. Long-distance freight, particularly international freight traffic between Member States and between the EU and third countries, is a major contributor to this congestion.

Europe’s road system has borne the brunt of increasing freight traffic mainly because of the failure of alternative modes – rail and shipping – to keep pace with rising demand and to contribute to an integrated transport solution.

What Europe really needs – and is working towards – is a sustainable transport system that shifts freight off the roads onto more environmentally friendly transport modes.

The Marco Polo programme, an initiative of the European Union, was launched in 2003. Today, we are at the second edition of the programme which covers the period from 2006 to 2013. It aims to shift or avoid a substantial part of the expected increase in international freight traffic, estimated at 20 billion tonne-kilometres per year, from Europe’s roads onto short-sea shipping, rail and inland waterway transport.

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