At a press conference on Thursday 27 October for the presentation of the 3rd Transport Scoreboard in the EU, European Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc said that low emission transport had certainly increased in Europe but not quickly enough.
The commissioner thus informed journalists that “progress has been made on low emission mobility but the number of cars powered by clean energy is still far too low". One observation the Commission makes in its study is that some member states in the green mobility arena do in fact demonstrate that it is possible to increase the trend towards this objective.
The differences between member states in this area, however, are staggering. In the same way as last year, the Netherlands (see EUROPE 11435) remains the EU’s star pupil and is amongst leading countries with regard to electric vehicle recharge points in urban areas (145.4 recharge points for every 100,000 citizens), as well as in the area of new passenger vehicles using alternative energies (12.59% just behind Italy, with 12.80%). By comparison, Greece has an average of 0.7 recharge points for every 100,000 citizens, and only 0.04% of vehicles run on alternative energies in Cyprus.
Scandinavian countries are also at the top of the board when it comes to renewable energies used in transport consumption: Finland is at the top of the table (21%), followed by Sweden (19.2%), and struggling to keep up, Austria (8.9%). The countries that find themselves at the bottom of the class are mainly from southern and eastern Europe, like Slovenia (2.6%), Hungary (2.1%), Greece (1.4%), Spain (0.5%) and, finally, Estonia (0.2%).
On the question of clean transport, there is clearly a fault line developing in the EU, with member states in the north particularly ahead and member states in the south and east particularly lagging behind. This is certainly the case with Slovenia, the member state from which the commissioner hails and which is currently at a standstill in this area. Slovenia has effectively fallen from 14th to 24th place since the last study, in particular because of an investment deficit in alternative energies.
The Commission is particularly keen on achieving progress in the green mobility field and would like to provide it with a new boost. The Commission therefore adopted a strategy in July for promoting low emission transport (see EUROPE 11598, 11602).
The scoreboard takes into account many indicators in addition to those relating to green mobility, such as integrating transport in the single market, infrastructure investment and the points of view of consumers and transport users. Every year, the objective is to draw up as comprehensive a balance sheet as possible for the transport field in the EU. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)