Brussels, 07/12/2012 (Agence Europe) - Three percent of European Union GDP is said to be taken up by external costs relating to road transport, such as noise, pollution, accidents and climate change, according to the findings of a study conducted by the Technical University of Dresden (Germany) and presented on Thursday 6 December by the European Parliament Greens Group. The Greens therefore call for the internalisation of external costs to be speeded up through European legislation, as set out in the White Paper for transport in 2010.
The study considers that each car in the EU causes uncovered costs of €1,600 per year, i.e. not covered by the owner but by the rest of the society, including members of the public that do not own cars. Annually, this is equivalent to €373 billion, i.e. nearly 3% of EU GDP, mainly due to accidents and climate change.
The White Paper on transport had established the need for such costs to be internalised, allowing the real cost of road transport to be ascertained. No concrete measures have since been taken by the European Commission on this matter. Only the Eurovignette for heavy goods vehicles has taken it into account. This is why the Greens draw the legislator's attention to extending this concept within a maximum number of legislative initiatives. MEPs, for their part, have already introduced amendments along these lines in legislative proposals relating to the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) and the guidelines for the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T).
The spokesman for the Greens on transport, Michael Cramer, is highly critical of the fact that “it is repeatedly claimed that car traffic is the cash cow of the EU. The new study by the Technical University of Dresden shows the opposite is true”. He acknowledges that car use provides undeniable advantages for European citizens, but until external costs have been internalised, mobility choices will not be effective. He underlines that “we can avoid a large share of the costs of car use without putting an additional burden on citizens - provided that true costs provide the right incentives. We Greens are convinced that we can make mobility affordable while at the same time saving the climate”. (MD/transl.jl)