PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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For example, the new White Paper is explicitly calling for extensive new airport
infrastructures to “cope with growth.” Overall, the gist of the paper stands in significant
contrast to the EU’s new Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS) presented only a few
months earlier. Where one would expect the Commission to focus on the problem of
rising volumes of traffic, one finds calls for the additional funding of infrastructure
instead. This is moderated by multiple calls for shifting between modes, but modal shifts
in an of themselves of course do not decrease traffic. The pro-investment approach is
flanked by a strong focus on “bottlenecks”, i.e. a rhetoric which rather limits policy
discussions to the subject of congestion relief, and inappropriately skews vision away
from environmental problems arising from rising transport volumes (also see Chapter 6).
NGOs are particularly critical of not only the content but also the process by
which this paper was produced. They see an increasing trend towards less openness and
greater secrecy under the new Commissioner for Transport and Energy, Loyola de
Palacio. In fact, the only consultation of interested parties with regard to the White Paper
took place under the previous Commission prior to the merging of the transport and
energy directorates, when Neil Kinnock was the responsible transport commissioner.
The paper was extensively redrafted internally, resulting in numerous delays.
Significantly, as the European Federation for Transport and Environment (T&E) reports
in an October 18, 2001 news release, “the White Paper when adopted was immediately
viewed as inadequate by the Joint Informal Council of Transport and Environment
Ministers, falling short as it does of the political demands of EU leaders made at