EU chief blasted for proposing car ban in major cities

EUROPE’S transport chief has called for cars to be banned from all other major cities across Europe under a draconian EU masterplan to cut CO2 emissions by 60% over the next 40 years.

Critics immediately rounded on EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas’s strategy.

The Association of British Drivers branded the proposal economically disastrous and a “crazy” restriction on mobility.

“I suggest that he goes and finds himself a space in the local mental asylum,” said Hugh Bladon, a spokesman for the BDA.

“If he wants to bring everywhere to a grinding halt and to plunge us into a new dark age, he is on the right track. We have to keep things moving. The man is off his rocker.”

British Transport Minister Norman Baker said: “We will not be banning cars from city centres anymore than we will be having rectangular bananas.”

The plan also envisages an end to cheap holiday flights with a target that over 50% of all journeys above 299km should be by rail.

A huge goal is that by 2050 Europe should “move close to zero fatalities in road transport”, with an interim target of halving all road casualties by 2020.

Kallas said in a strategy paper that greenhouse gas emissions from transport should be cut to about a fifth below current levels by 2030, and to 60% below 1990 levels by 2050.

In the long term, that means eliminating all oil-fuelled motor cars from major cities, shifting half of road freight onto trains and barges, and getting around 40% of aviation fuel from sustainable biofuels.

The economic crisis has made the objective even more pressing, he said, given that the EU spends around €210 billion a year on importing oil.

“Trains, planes and ships last for decades,” Kallas told reporters. “The choices made today will determine the shape of transport in 2050, and that’s why we are acting now to achieve a transformation.”

However, most of the action is postponed for later. The 2030 goal of a 20% cut in emissions is based on cuts from recent levels, but it fails even to cancel out a rise of about a third since 1990, which was mainly caused by increasing car ownership and cheaper flights.

Compared to the 1990 baseline, which the EU uses for nearly all its other measurements of emissions, Kallas’ target actually amounts to an 8% increase.

“This Commission paper blatantly passes the buck to the next generation,” said Franziska Achterberg of Greenpeace. “This strategy will do nothing to protect the EU from volatile oil prices,” she said.