Mew DG Committee To Take Action
Commissioner Tajani’s pressure has paid off and the European Commission is creating a DG level working group to coordinate work on decarbonising all transport nodes. Following the lead of the reinvigorated President Barroso, the first meeting is due to take place in early November.
In his ‘Political Guidelines for the Next Commission’, Barroso declared that the next Commission needed to work towards decarbonising electricity supply and transport, but fortified with his Lisbon proof mandate, this is looking like a priority for this Commission. Central to the project is developing the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) ‘as a space where not only state of the art technology and infrastructure, but also best practices are applied’.
Action is to concentrate on many fields, including promoting low carbon transport, but there will be a push for electric cars. This would also require massive changes to infrastructure and the planning for the working group notes that ‘the issue of funding for transport research and infrastructure will be crucial’.
TEN-T is undergoing a policy review and decarbonising of transport is expected to be the main theme of the next White Paper on transport policy. The Commission has just announced €500 million of funding for TEN-T projects. Initially this was to be spread over several years, but as part of the EU response to the financial crisis, the monies were released earlier, as transport is considered vital to economic recovery. The funded projects include dredging estuaries, motorway improvements and increasing capacity at sea ports.
On financing, a recent position paper for TEN-T states ‘The polluter pays principle is an accepted principle throughout the European Union. In practice it is far from implemented. It is difficult for governments to confront lobbies of various road users, transporters and producers using fossil fuels when it comes to, for instance, fair excise duties on fuel. In times of economic downturn, the pressure is nearly impossible to withstand, leading to delayed implementation of the polluter pays principle.’
It will also be hard to resist the protests from citizens, who are attached to their cars and would need to be persuaded to pay higher taxes and tolls. It won’t be a surprise to learn that the Taxation and Customs Union is part of the new working group. What will raise eyebrows is that the group will explicitly be looking at taxation, something considered to be a competence of member states.
