The European Commission put forward a package of new "Greening Transport" initiatives to steer transport towards sustainability dated on the 8th July 2008. Mobility is key to our quality of life and is vital for the EU’s competitiveness. It is the backbone of the economy making the links between the different stages of production chains and allowing service industries to reach their clients, as well as being a significant employer in its own right. As such it is key to achieving the goals of the EU’s ‘Lisbon’ strategy for growth and employment. This is all the more so given that the sector is growing rapidly: between 1995 and 2005, goods and passenger transport in the EU grew by 31.3% and 17.7% respectively and this growth is predicted to continue.

The package includes both:

• Action to improve price signals to consumers and business so that they have incentives to change their behaviour.
• Action to stimulate the market to offer alternatives so that when consumers and business choose to change their behaviour, they can do so easily.

The package has five parts:

1. Greening Transport Communication. This Communication summarises the whole package and sets out what new initiatives the Commission will take in this field until the end of 2009.
2. Greening Transport Inventory. This document describes the large amount of EU action already taken to green transport and on which this package builds.
3. Strategy to Internalise the External Costs of Transport. This Strategy focuses on making transport prices better reflect their real cost to society so that environmental damage and congestion can be reduced while boosting the efficiency of transport and ultimately the economy as a whole. (COM(2008)435 final - Strategy for the internalisation of external costs).
4. Proposal for a Directive on road tolls for lorries.  This proposal would enable Member States to reduce environmental damage and congestion through more efficient and greener road tolls for lorries. Revenue from the tolls would be used to reduce environmental impacts and cut congestion.
5. Communication on rail noise. This Communication sets out how to reduce the perceived noise from existing rail freight trains by 50% and the measures the Commission and other stakeholders will need to take in the future to achieve this. (COM(2008) 432. - Rail noise abatement measures addressing the existing fleet).

Specific measures in the package are planned to come into effect before 2011 for heavy goods vehicles and for rail noise by 2013.

What is the problem?

• Transport is key to our economies and our lifestyles, but it causes too many accidents, too much congestion, too much noise and too much environmental damage, both through climate change and local pollution
• Growth in transport use is likely to make these problems worse
• As society bears the costs, there is little incentive for transport users to change their behaviour and reduce the negative impacts they cause.

What are the benefits?

• Savings of 6-8% of CO2 emissions, NOx emissions and sulphur emissions each year from heavy goods vehicles.
• Reduction by 50% in noise from rail freight trains.
• Social benefic as over two-thirds of Europeans prefer policy decisions on the environment to be made at European Union level.