Sustainable and smart transport in Europe

Briefing 10-09-2020

Innovation will be critical for economic recovery – and the transport sector offers many opportunities for innovation to help drive the post-pandemic economy forward. The European recovery plan, centred around the Green Deal, places great emphasis on the growth potential of transforming the economy to a greener model and taking advantage of technological advancements and digitalisation to bolster European industrial competitiveness. The strategy for sustainable and smart mobility to be tabled at the end of 2020, as part of the Green Deal initiatives, will play a significant role in defining the way ahead, as well as in addressing pandemic-related concerns, in the field of mobility. Key priorities will include developing sustainable urban mobility, harnessing technological development and digitalisation, addressing transport emissions, ensuring resilience of the transport sector and ensuring movement of goods and connectivity. To feed into these discussions, this paper will survey the challenges presented by the pandemic for urban mobility, and the potential of new technologies and digitalisation to provide solutions as well as to support the 'greening' of transport. It will review the continued challenges of sustainability in the transport sector and trends in decarbonisation with the help of fuel and vehicle innovations. It will also outline EU actions to date in these areas and provide some suggestions for potential future action, including areas to consider for measures to boost the resilience of the transport sector.