EU Parliament shows tough love to Europe’s ‘problem child’

Receive the Transport Brief in your inbox by subscribing here.

Welcome to the Transport Brief!

This week the European Parliament will vote on several key laws to reign in the transport sector’s stubbornly high greenhouse gas emissions. This comes after European transport ministers met in Brussels to discuss their climate ‘problem child’. 

Most attention will be on the Parliament’s vote to adopt tighter targets for heavy vehicle CO2 emissions. 

Within industry, there is openness to the challenge – Volvo Group CEO Martin Lundstedt adopted a ‘can do’ attitude, when talking with Euractiv’s Jonathan Packroff about the new targets last week.

The Parliament has already reached agreement with national governments. So the vote should be a rubber stamping exercise. But when it comes to internal combustion engine politics, nothing can be taken for granted these days. 

The Parliament will also agree a standard methodology to calculate transport’s greenhouse gas emissions. The file is technical, but important and, as the old adage says, ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’. 

The Parliament is not just busy with lawmaking. This morning (Tuesday 9 April), its Environmental Committee will be getting their heads around two long-standing transport decarbonisation challenges:

Firstly, how transport modes can sustainably use biofuels to decarbonise, and secondly, how to cut down passenger vehicle CO2 emissions. 

The debates will be transport-focused, but their impacts will be felt far more widely – biofuel policies hit food and biodiversity, and Europe’s transitions to zero emission vehicles will be a critical driver of future jobs and global competitiveness. 

This Parliament may be approaching the end of its term, but the issues it is grappling with are not going anywhere anytime soon.

What you need to know this week:

Carbon pricing crucial to deliver on greening transport, Volvo boss says

The implementation of the EU’s carbon pricing scheme for road transport is crucial to drive the business case for electric and hydrogen trucks, Martin Lundstedt, CEO of the Volvo Group, told Euractiv in an interview.

ESA to launch Arctic weather satellite in June

The European Space Agency said Thursday (4 April) it will launch a satellite in June which will improve weather forecasting in the Arctic — a region highly exposed to the effects of global warming.

Germany says Russia ‘very likely’ responsible for Baltic GPS disruptions

Russia is “very likely” behind a series of disturbances affecting GPS navigation in the Baltic region, the German Defence Ministry said on Thursday (4 April), pointing to the Kaliningrad exclave as a source of the problem.

Europe’s industry and power sector emissions plunge 15% in 2023

The EU’s emissions trading scheme sectors, industry and power, saw emissions drop by 15% in 2023, putting them on track for their 2030 targets, but experts question whether this was because of – or despite – Europe’s carbon trading framework.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

Read more with Euractiv