The Commission plans to publish its White Paper on the Future of Transport in December 2010. It will outline its vision for the next decade and contain specific actions on infrastructure and bottlenecks. To feed into this work, the Transport Committee of the European Parliament adopted in June a report on a sustainable future for transport by rapporteur MEP Mathieu Grosch (EPP, Belgium). This report has been adopted at plenary on the 6th of July by the full Parliament (559 votes in favour).
It stresses that decarbonising transport is one of the main challenges of future EU transport policy, as has been expressed by the President of the Commission Mr. Barroso, in the Political Guidelines for the Next Commission.
Key factors to achieve a more sustainable transport will be amongst others to:
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develop co-modal solutions by improving infrastructure;
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support the internalisation of external costs to reduce exhaust gases, noise and bottlenecks, providing that all modes of transport are covered and that the revenue is used to improve infrastructure sustainability;
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complete the liberalisation of cabotage transport to reduce empty mileage;
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create an agency for road transport to improve road safety and remove single market barriers,
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support research and development, and
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reduce the administrative burden in the field of transport documents.