As he reaches the end of his term, Siim Kallas celebrates the success of his last years in Brussels as Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Transport. Mr Kallas thanks the transport community for the steps jointly taken.
One of the cornerstones of his mandate within the Transport Portfolio has been the adoption of a White Paper ‘Transport 2050‘, which provides a pathway and a vision for the future of transport. The flagship of this ambitious proposal is to achieve a Single European Transport Area while reducing Europe’s dependence on imported oil, and cut carbon emissions in transport by 60% by 2050.
According to the outgoing Transport Commissioner the major achievements in the field of transport over the last five years are the revision of the TEN-T guidelines, that aim to close the transport infrastructure gap existing among Member States and remove barriers to the functioning of the internal market of transports.
Along the same lines, the Connecting Europe Facility to improve key transport connections in the Single Market (funding tripled for the period 2014-20) and the reinforcement of R&D to deliver cleaner and more efficient planes, trains and cars (50% increase of funding) are also remarkable.
Key measures aiming to sustain cleaner, safer and more efficient transport were taken, such as the Directive on the deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems in the field of road transport, which coordinated a coherent deployment and use of ITS within the Union, as a means to boost a cleaner, safer and more efficient transport system.
It is to be expected that among the priorities of the next Commission will be strengthening road transport policy (in particular cross-border issues or those relating to the quality of infrastructure), public and urban transport, intelligent transport systems and the development of data processing.
To learn more about the mandate of Siim Kallas and his potential successor, Violeta Bulc, click here
To follow the hearing of Violeta Bulc today at 19.00h click here
