The long and winding road of EU transport policy

The President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso has a VW Touareg that weighs 2.5 tonnes, Commission Vice-President Margot Wallström favours a Volvo (she is Swedish remember), Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas has asked for a ‘hybrid’ Toyota Prius for his official car.

Policymakers’ choices about how they get from A to B never used to interest anyone. But now their preferences are watched and debated. While an individual’s choice can attract criticism - from greens and European carmakers - this is nothing compared to the heated disagreements that characterise the EU’s transport policy.

According to the European Environment Agency (EEA), transport (excluding aviation and shipping) accounts for 21% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the EU15 countries. And the new member states are catching up. By 2003, their roads took the same share of the transport mix as in western Europe. Although on average the EU10 saw lower growth in greenhouse gases during the 1990s, the gap between them and older member states is narrowing fast.

This means that carbon emissions from the transport sector are growing faster than those from any other source. But these spiralling increases are not sustainable. The Stern Report notes that "deep cuts" in the transport sector’s carbon emissions "are likely to be more difficult in the shorter term, but will ultimately be needed."

Most people agree that something must be done to reduce the road and rail transport’s heavy ecological tyre-tracks. But the remedy divides environmental campaigners and businesses down the middle. It is an argument that reveals a deep fault-line in how policymakers and businesses understand green growth.

The difficult issue is ‘decoupling’, namely the idea of detaching transport volume from economic growth in order to limit or reduce its environmental effects. In 2001, the Commission’s white paper on transport was littered with references to decoupling. Business organisations were unhappy with the approach. Vincent McGovern, a policy adviser at BusinessEurope, the European employers’ organisation, explains: "Our position since 2001 has been consistent…trying to decouple makes no sense, because it is impossible to do. There will be an increase in all modes of transport, especially on the roads." He says the 2001 policy failed to take into account the looming enlargement. "The policy ignored that the main links [to the twelve new member states] are by road, there is no reason behind it," he says. The Commission seemed to listen, because in last year’s mid-term review decoupling appeared to have been edited out of the transport strategy.

The EEA criticised the apparent shift in policy, from managing demand for transport to trying to ameliorate the side-effects of growth and it was not alone. Jos Dings, director of the European Federation for Transport and the Environment, a conservation group, thinks that the Commission is out of touch with environmental and economic reality. He says that the mid-term review is "one big, incoherent shopping bag of desires from the transport directorate, with no economic underpinning". He argues that London’s congestion charge shows that demand management is not incompatible with economic growth.

The Commission in January proposed legislation to require that by 2020, average emissions from new cars are 130 grams of CO2 per kilometre (g/km). The latest studies put average emissions at 162g/km. The binding target would encourage technological developments forcing emissions down, according to the Commission strategy.

Public transport groups think that the Commission is relying too heavily on improving technologies. In a recent paper, the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) states that relying on technology is "a high-risk strategy", because the energy gains from cleaner vehicles have been offset by a greater increase in traffic. The association claims that technology will only begin to make a difference to the level of emissions by 2040.

But there is consensus on one point. Both business and green groups want governments to educate citizens so they can make more informed transport choices. UITP wants to see the public educated about climate change and on "the risks and responsibilities of present transport models and choices". BusinessEurope believes that "the education of the user" is as an important aspect of an integrated approach. Governments are already debating how to change people’s behaviour, from controversy in Germany about whether there should be speed limits on the Autobahn, to a cross-party debate in the UK about green taxes to penalise drivers with fuel-inefficient cars. With this focus on individual choices, the future will bring even more intense scrutiny of the commissioners’ car park.

The President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso has a VW Touareg that weighs 2.5 tonnes, Commission Vice-President Margot Wallström favours a Volvo (she is Swedish remember), Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas has asked for a ‘hybrid’ Toyota Prius for his official car.