Transport Connecting ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H and businesses ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H Competitive transport systems are vital for Europe's ability to compete in the world, for economic growth, job creation and for people's everyday quality of life. CONTENTS This publication is a part of a series that explains what the EU does in different policy areas, why the EU is involved and what the results are. You can find the publications online: http://europa.eu/pol/index_en.htm http://europa.eu/lbY34KD How the EU works Europe in 12 lessons Europe 2020: Europe's growth strategy The founding fathers of the EU Agriculture Banking and finance Borders and security Budget Climate action Competition Consumers Culture and audiovisual Customs Digital agenda Economic and monetary union and the euro Education, training, youth and sport Employment and social affairs Energy Enlargement Enterprise Environment Fight against fraud Food safety Foreign affairs and security policy Humanitarian aid and civil protection Internal market International cooperation and development Justice, fundamental rights and equality Maritime affairs and fisheries Migration and asylum Public health Regional policy Research and innovation Taxation Trade Transport Why does the EU have a transport policy?.................3 How does EU transport policy work?............................6 What EU transport policy does......8 The main means of transport.....10 The future of EU transport policy.. 18 Find out more...................20 The EU explained: Transport European Commission Directorate-General for Communication Citizens information 1049 Brussels BELGIUM Manuscript updated in November 2014 Cover and page 2 picture: © iStockphoto.com/nadla 20 pp. — 21 x 29.7 cm ISBN 978-92-79-42777-0 doi:10.2775/13082 Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2014 © European Union, 2014 Reproduction is authorised. For any use or reproduction of individual photos, permission must be sought directly from the copyright holders. TRANSPORT 3 Why does the EU have a transport policy? Europe needs strong transport connections to drive trade and economic growth, and to create employment and prosperity. Transport networks are at the heart of the supply chain and are the foundation of any country's economy. They allow goods to be distributed efficiently and people to travel. They make places accessible, bring and bind us together and allow us a high quality of life. Transport is a cornerstone of the European integration process and is firmly linked to the creation and completion of the internal market, which promotes jobs and economic growth. As one of the first common policy areas of today's European Union, it was seen as vital for fulfilling three of the four freedoms of a common market as established in the Treaty of Rome in 1957: the free movement of individuals, services and goods. Without smooth transport connections and networks, there would be no such movement. This is why EU transport policy has always focused on overcoming obstacles between Member States and creating a single European transport area with fair competition conditions for and between the different forms of transport: road, rail, air and waterborne. Over the past 60 years, EU transport has progressed substantially and continues to make a significant contribution to European prosperity and employment. The industry now employs around 10 million people, accounting for 4.5 % of total employment in the EU and creating about the same percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). Smooth transport connections are also vital to the EU's economy in terms of its exports — shipping carries 90 % of the EU's foreign trade. Many European companies are world leaders in infrastructure, logistics and the manufacturing of transport equipment. And EU households today spend 13.5 % of their income on transport-related goods and services, such as season rail tickets and holiday or business flights, making transport the second-largest item in their household budgets after house-related expenditure. Over the past decades, developments in European transport policy have helped to strengthen the wider EU internal market by opening up national markets previously dominated by public monopolies, such as in aviation and rail. In addition, barriers to access, unnecessary differences in technical and administrative standards and distortions of competition across EU countries — pricing, taxes and other charges — are gradually being removed as part of the process of creating a genuine single European transport area across all forms of travel. This has largely been achieved in areas such as aviation, where a policy of market liberalisation initiated in the 1990s sparked a period of unprecedented growth. But market liberalisation alone is not enough to achieve the European Union's objectives of improving travel possibilities across Europe and ensuring high-quality transport services, both for citizens and for business. Expanding, modernising and streamlining EU-wide infrastructure is also essential to create seamless cross-border networks across the different forms of travel. This is why the trans-European network policy was enshrined in the EU's Maastricht Treaty of 1992. In addition, the Treaty incorporated environmental protection requirements into transport policy as a tool to help complete the internal market. EU transport policy is also about helping and protecting people when they travel. Here, one of its achievements has been to secure and uphold passenger rights. Now, when passengers experience delays, they no longer have to find out for themselves what has gone wrong. They have a right to information and they know they can demand it from their transport company. And passengers with disabilities and reduced mobility qualify for special attention. The EU is the first, and only, region in the world whose passengers enjoy comprehensive and integrated basic rights across all means of transport. THE EUROPEAN UNION EXPLAINED These rights are based on the principles of nondiscrimination; accurate, timely and accessible information; and immediate and proportionate assistance. Some transport history Transport was one of the first common policy areas of the European Economic Community and has its roots in the Treaty of Rome. See and download the European Commission's passenger rights app: http://europa.eu/lVJ 79Wh But the treaty did not define the substance of a common transport policy, meaning that Member States had to agree how to formulate one. Progress in doing this was very slow until the 1980s, largely because governments were reluctant to give up control over their national transport networks and also because of major differences between the regulatory and transport structures in each country. EU policy has also helped transport to become less polluting, as well as more efficient, safe and secure. The EU has advanced in these areas, both technical and regulatory, in all the main means of transport: road, rail, aviation and maritime. Frustrated after at least 25 years of patchy legislation, the European Parliament took the unprecedented step of taking the Council of the European Union to the European Court of Justice for its failure to develop a common transport policy. The Court's judgment of May 1985 had the effect of injecting some political impetus and finally, advances started to be made towards a common policy. The 1985 Court judgment was quickly followed by a White Paper issued by the European Commission on promoting the internal market. It contained specific references to transport and certain goals to be achieved by 1992. TRANSPORT 5 1986: The Single European Act replaced unanimity with qualified majority EU voting for air and sea transport policy, relieving some of the political deadlock of the previous decades. 1992: The Maastricht Treaty established the trans-European networks and incorporated environmental protection requirements into transport policy, a development that was reinforced in the Commission's White Paper of that year on the common transport policy. This stressed the principle of sustainable mobility as well as the aim of opening up transport markets to competition. By 1992, the foundations of a common transport policy had been laid. 1997: The Treaty of Amsterdam built more environmental protection measures into transport. It gave the European Parliament co-decision powers with the Council on nearly all aspects of transport policy. In the following years, the Commission analysed national and regional differences in transport costs, charges and pricing in an attempt to create a better climate for competition. Transport policy landmarks 2001: Another White Paper showed a more decisive shift towards an environmentally responsible transport policy as a way to adapt to uneven growth in the various forms of transport, congestion on Europe's roads and railways and the rising impact of pollution. It predicted a massive rise in traffic, especially in road and air transport, as well as health and environmental problems caused by the increased pollution. 2006: A progress review decided that more was needed to combat transport's negative impact on energy use and environmental quality. It proposed measures such as a freight logistics plan, intelligent or 'smart' systems to make transport greener and more efficient and a plan to boost inland waterways. 2011: A follow-up White Paper ('Roadmap to a single European transport area') focused on the work remaining to be done to complete the internal market in transport. Among other areas, it focused on: • building integrated transport networks which draw together different means of transport, or modes; • creating multimodal hubs (or 'nodes') and removing longstanding bottlenecks that can be technical, administrative or capacity related; • improving infrastructure in the countries which joined the EU from 2004 onwards; • emphasising research, innovation, investing in transport for the future without dependence on oil and preparing the industry to meet difficult decarbonisation targets without reducing mobility. 6 THE EUROPEAN UNION EXPLAINED How does EU transport policy work? As part of the project to complete the European internal market, it is essential that transport connections are properly joined up across the 28 Member States that make up the European Union. This involves building missing links and removing the many technical and administrative barriers that hinder smooth traffic and trade flows and generate unnecessary bottlenecks in Europe's transport system. It also often requires the streamlining of national differences in transport policy which can cause distortions of competition, as well as the removal of barriers to market access. The ultimate aim is to create a single European transport area, to help Europe stay competitive by optimising the performance of the entire transport sector for the benefit of all. For this to succeed, there must be access to top-quality transport infrastructure and services, backed by research, innovation and solid long-term funding. Legislation The legislative push towards the single European market that began in the 1980s heralded a turning point in transport policy. Since then, the trend has focused on facilitating cross-border movements of goods and services. TRANSPORT GROWTH IN THE EU YEAR 1995 = 100 140 135 130 125 120 115 *-' Y 110 105 100 *«• in CTl ID cn cn CTl CT1 8661 CT1 CT1 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 Passengers (pkm) Goods (tkm) GDP, Chain Linked Volumes This has meant not only dismantling cross-border barriers but also integrating national markets. Transport legislation also aims to open access to markets and infrastructure, achieve technical compatibility — rail rolling stock, for example — and remove other technical and administrative barriers to competition. In turn this has led to rising GDP figures across the EU, linked to increases in passenger and freight transport. Market access is balanced with EU-wide rules in areas such as driving and rest times for road freight, guaranteed rights for passengers across all forms of transport and social equality in conditions that ensure a fair and open environment for competition. Landmark pieces of EU transport legislation include the three railway packages, which began a gradual liberalisation of national rail markets, laws on road and maritime 'cabotage' (the transport of goods or passengers between two points in the same country by transporters registered in another country), and the two single European sky packages, which aim to create one European airspace under a set of common aviation rules. Infrastructure At the moment, transport infrastructure is unequally developed across Europe. In many of the countries that most recently became full EU members, there are no purpose-built high-speed rail links; their motorway networks are on average far less developed than in older Member States. Apart from the need to build missing links, a great deal of Europe's transport infrastructure also needs expanding and upgrading. This is where the trans-European transport network, or TEN-T, comes in: a longstanding and ambitious project to modernise and 'knit together' today's patchwork of national parts into a smooth-running network that connects all corners of Europe while making the best use of all the different means of travel. With the TEN-T, the EU plans to establish a core network by 2030, filling in missing cross-border links and making the network 'smarter', with deadlines to make sure that all projects contributing to the core network are implemented as a priority. TRANSPORT 7 The core network will be supported by a comprehensive network of routes that feed into it, regionally and nationally. Standards are set to ensure that trains, ships, planes, trucks and cars can use the infrastructure safely and without any technical problems. Transport financing under the Connecting Europe Facility for the period 2014-20 (see later section on the CEF) will also focus on this core transport network. The aim is to ensure that, progressively, and by 2050, the large majority of Europe's citizens and businesses will be no more than 30 minutes' travel time from this extensive network. Apart from smoother and quicker journeys, it will provide safer and less-congested travel. One of the most remarkable TEN-T success stories is the 0resund bridge between Malmo and Copenhagen, Europe's longest combined road and rail bridge, which connects Nordic countries to central Europe. This link has contributed to an increase in economic traffic between the two sides and led to significant benefits for local regional development. Since it opened more than a decade ago, rail traffic has risen by more than 200 %. Research and innovation The EU considers research into resource-efficient transport that respects the environment across all forms of travel as an important part of transport policy. 'Smart, green and integrated transport' is identified as a major challenge as part of project funding within the EU's 'Horizon 2020' 2014-20 research programme, to ensure that Europe stays at the cutting edge of technological advances in transport. Technological advance is the basis for the future of European transport, not least to keep Europe's transport industry at the forefront of global competition. It is also the key to reducing the carbon emissions that transport produces, because innovation and progress help to improve efficiency — in aircraft and automotive engines, for example, or by replacing oil-based energy sources. This will be especially important in the years ahead since a significant shift in type of transport use will be needed to reduce oil dependency, greenhouse gas emissions and local pollution. This can be achieved by making better use of cleaner — and often cheaper — alternatives like rail and waterborne travel. Researching, developing and deploying intelligent, or 'smart', ways to improve use of the existing infrastructure and of ICT to ensure seamless connections between different means of travel will also help to make transport cleaner, safer and more efficient. Road transport is one example where innovative technology can help drivers to reduce fuel consumption, direct them to available parking places and avoid traffic jams and collisions. In aviation, the single European sky air traffic management research programme (SESAR) represents the technology dimension of the drive towards a single European sky. SESAR should triple airspace capacity and raise safety by a factor of 10. This would reduce carbon emissions by 10 % for each flight and cut air traffic management costs by 50 %. SESAR aims to combine efficient fuel consumption with optimised aircraft access to airports and flight trajectory management, so as to make aviation more sustainable and better performing. The Qresund bridge is the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe. 8 THE EUROPEAN UNION EXPLAINED What EU transport policy does How do we prefer to travel? In 2010, Europeans travelled, on average, around 12 900 kilometres per person within the territory of the EU's then 27 Member States. For private individuals, cars remain by far the most common form of transport — partly due to their use for short local journeys and in rural areas where there are no other options — and accounted for nearly 74 % of this passenger travel distance. This was followed by aviation with 8 %, buses and coaches with roughly the same share, railways with 6 % and then powered two-wheel vehicles, trams and metres. Sea travel was last, with less than 1 %. For freight, road haulage trucks still dominate over short and medium distances. A similar breakdown shows that road haulage accounted for nearly half of the freight tonnage transported in 2010, followed by seagoing ships and rail, and then inland waterways and oil pipelines. Air cargo came last with less than 1 % — but despite the low volume, the cost-value ratio of this type of transport freight is often far higher. Cars remain the most popular form of transport for European citizens How much pollution is caused by transport? The European Union relies heavily on fossil fuels to power its transport sector. Oil-based fuels account for around 96 % of the sector's total energy supply, with road transport taking by far the largest share of the energy used by all forms of transport. Meeting the EU's climate change targets will require deep cuts in emissions from transport, whose own carbon dioxide emissions account for at least 20 % of the EU's greenhouse gas emissions. To meet the target of reducing global greenhouse emissions by the 80 % thought necessary to keep climate change within safe limits (a temperature increase of no more than 2 ° Celsius), the transport sector needs to reduce its emissions by 60 % by 2050. Cutting emissions caused by transport is a key part of EU policy, which is backed by numerous projects and initiatives to cut urban congestion, encourage more use of cleaner forms of travel such as rail and inland waterways and develop alternative non-oil fuels in the shipping and automotive sectors. Road, as the largest single form of transport, is responsible for the largest share of pollution: some 71 % of overall transport C02 emissions, according to the latest data (and passenger cars cause around two thirds of that). But other sectors pollute significantly less. Maritime and aviation account for 14 % and 13 % respectively, then inland navigation with 2 %. Rail is the least polluting means of transport, with less than 1 %. Given that a quarter of EU transport emissions originate in urban areas, towns and cities play a key role in mitigating the effects of climate change. Many are also struggling to battle congestion and improve poor air quality. TRANSPORT 9 GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS IN THE EU PER TRANSPORT SECTOR 180 160 140 120 100 Other; 0.8 °/c Total waterborne; 14.1 % Total civil aviation; 12.4 °/c Railways; 0.6 40 1 aar) o>-i-i