Take Action

On 20 November 2009 the EHA attended the EU confernece “A Sustainable Future for Transport conference”, organized by DG TREN to prepare a new Transport White Paper covering the period 2010 – 2020 which should be published for the second semester of 2010. This conference was part of the debate launched in 2008 by the Commission on the main challenges and opportunities for the transport sector in the long term.

The first ‘milestone’ in this exercise was the Communication: “A sustainable future for transport: Towards an integrated, technology-led and user friendly system” (COM (2009)279/4), adopted by the Commission on 17 June 2009. The vision and ideas put forward in the Communication were meant to stimulate further debate aimed at identifying possible policy options to meet the identified challenges of the future in order to achieve the goals of the Common Transport Policy. In response to the Communication, the EHA had sent out a press release on that occasion indicating the need to coordinate electric transport infrastructure development for battery cars and hydrogen vehicles as well as a position paper as a contribution to the consultation.

Thus, the 20 November conference aimed at building the framework of the forthcoming White Paper and at debating about the biggest challenges of the transport policy for the next years with a view to clarify the different positions and to find the right balance between the different stakeholder views.

According to Antonio Tajani, the White Paper must respond to these three challenges:

-use “green-corridors” (in which rail, sea and inland waterway connections are provided, together with modern infrastructure that supports clean technologies) as a best practice for future projects

-how to turn the consultancy to reality?

-how to  involve  the stakeholder in the drafting of the White Paper?

The decarbonisation of transport and the need to better exploit the networks were particularly addressed during the conference.

On this first issue, Matthias Ruete (DG TREN) considered that “There is widespread agreement that decarbonising transport should be at the centre of transport policy in the coming decades. The need for mobility will continue to increase, but transport will only be able to meet this demand if it takes a sustainable path”.

A call was launched to coordinate the cities actions with a view to develop low carbon technologies, thus cities have a major role to play with the development of smart grids for buildings and houses as intelligent infrastructure.

Another hey issue is the funds and research for alternative fuels, which need to be increased, in particular for road transport, the dominant mode of transport.

Regarding the infrastructure, it was stressed on the need to imbricate this issue with the development of transport. For electric vehicles, public investment for the development of infrastructure was considered as fundamental.