Manifesto for the next five years of EU regulation of transport

The recent renewal of the European institutions offers an opportunity for European regulation. While the new institutional composition will be in place for the next five years (2019–2024), the legislative and public-spending decisions made under the von der Leyen Commission will likely have implications for decades to come in terms of shaping the direction of the European transport sector. While the completion of the Single European Transport Area continues to be work in progress, new global challenges – namely climate change and digitalisation – are exerting additional pressure, but also offer new opportunities for the European transport sector. In its Long-Term Decarbonisation Strategy entitled “A Clean Planet for All”, the Commission paints a clear picture of the vast transformations that will have to take place across all sectors of the economy, including transport, for Europe to reach net-climate neutrality by 2050. Digitalisation, on the other hand, is adding a new layer of complexity onto transport; yet, if adequately regulated, it has the potential to advance EU sustainability objectives, while at the same time increasing efficiency, enabling smoother and more customer-oriented operations and, not least, enhancing safety. In this Manifesto, we show that the challenges of digitalisation and sustainability can be turned into as many opportunities for furthering the Single European Transport Area. In addition, digitalisation and sustainability are challenges far too big to be tackled only at national levels; both call for a truly European approach.Furthermore, neither challenge can any longer be addressed in an exclusively sector-specific manner; a resolutely intermodal regulatory framework will thus be in order.