PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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contradictory and ultimately as a win-lose affair which is exploitative of both nature and
of the weaker stakeholders.
10.2.2 Rhetoric: EU Transport Policy Discourses
Part II was dedicated to the analysis of EU transport policy “rhetoric.” The
performed discourse analyses of key EU infrastructure policy documents and statements
confirmed that growth and competitiveness considerations continue to win over
redistributive and environmental aims. Most of the key EU documents referring to
sustainable development and sustainable transport analyzed in Chapter 5 exhibited a clear
tendency to adhere to the underlying rationale of ecological modernization which
emphasizes “sustainable growth”. However, the text-oriented analysis in this chapter
also showed that the EU does not always strictly follow the discursive framework of
ecological modernization in its formulation of policy objectives. Instead, the EU borrows
rather freely from a variety of rationales, be this the result of intentional strategizing or
unintentional multifaceted rationalizing on the part of EU decision-makers. So in the
end, EU policy statements on sustainable transport are biased in favor of ecological
modernization in an inconsistent way. Quite predictably, statements coming out of the
DG Environment are often more environmentally ambitious than formulations coming
from DG Transport and Energy. Some formulations are openly contradictory. So the
accusation that the EU simply “disregards the environment” is too simple. The EU is
simply not binding itself to a more “radical” interpretation of sustainable transport the
way that political economists or environmentalists do. Measured within its own
discursive framework, the EU obviously appears less hypocritical than seen from without.