Hard but clean times

The regulating machine in Brussels recently steered on an environmentalist track and looks less able to change its route than an overloaded truck. Brussels turned its guns on road and air transport emissions last month, aiming to make transporters pay for the negative effects they inflict on society.
The initiative called ”internalization of external costs“ means that hauliers will have to pay not only for infrastructure development, but also things like the hospital costs of people involved in road accidents or costs related to congestion, including time loss. Following the same idea, air carriers will have to pay in order to have their jets emissions discharged at high altitude.
Hard times for many transporters are thus announced, but some have reasons to be optimistic - rail and inland waterway transporters saw the bulk of TEN-T financing going their way. For this reason, road and air unions and association raised their voice against the European Comission, even going so far as to saying that the European Parliament is ”lost in the woods“. Apart from this kind of attacks, 2008 seems to be a year of intense negotiations and decisive actions against pollution caused by transport.