Chapter 41: Transport Policy in the European Union

This chapter provides an overview of transport policy in the EU. In order to facilitate an understanding of transport policy in this group of European countries, Section 2 provides a brief outline of the EU and its institutions. The main issues leading to the appearance of a common transport policy are presented in Section 3. The liberalization legislation is presented in somewhat more detail for air transport, maritime transport, inland shipping, rail transport, and road transport in Section 4. Section 5 covers the more general issues of antitrust and state aid, while the last section concentrates on the European infrastructure policy and the charging for infrastructure usage. More details on the background and politics of the European transport policy can be found in Stevens (2004).