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The European Commission on Monday unveiled a "single European transport area" aimed at enforcing "a profound shift in transport patterns for passengers" by 2050. The plan also envisages an end to cheap holiday flights from Britain to southern Europe with a target that over 50 per cent of all journeys above 186 miles should be by rail. Top of the EU's list to cut climate change emissions is a target of "zero" for the number of petrol and diesel-driven cars and lorries in the EU's future cities. Siim Kallas, the EU transport commission, insisted that Brussels directives and new taxation of fuel would be used to force people out of their cars and onto "alternative" means of transport. "That means no more conventionally fuelled cars in our city centres," he said. "Action will follow, legislation, real action to change behaviour." The Association of British Drivers rejected the proposal to ban cars as economically disastrous and as 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." Mr Kallas has denied that the EU plan to cut car use by half over the next 20 years, before a total ban in 2050, will limit personal mobility or reduce Europe's economic competitiveness. "Curbing mobility is not an option, neither is business as usual. We can break the transport system's dependence on oil without sacrificing its efficiency and compromising mobility. It can be win-win," he claimed. Christopher Monckton, Ukip's transport spokesman said: "The EU must be living in an alternate reality, where they can spend trillions and ban people from their cars. "This sort of greenwashing grandstanding adds nothing and merely highlights their grandiose ambitions."
The European Commission on Monday unveiled a "single European transport area" aimed at enforcing "a profound shift in transport patterns for passengers" by 2050.
The plan also envisages an end to cheap holiday flights from Britain to southern Europe with a target that over 50 per cent of all journeys above 186 miles should be by rail.
Top of the EU's list to cut climate change emissions is a target of "zero" for the number of petrol and diesel-driven cars and lorries in the EU's future cities.
Siim Kallas, the EU transport commission, insisted that Brussels directives and new taxation of fuel would be used to force people out of their cars and onto "alternative" means of transport.
"That means no more conventionally fuelled cars in our city centres," he said. "Action will follow, legislation, real action to change behaviour."
The Association of British Drivers rejected the proposal to ban cars as economically disastrous and as 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."
Mr Kallas has denied that the EU plan to cut car use by half over the next 20 years, before a total ban in 2050, will limit personal mobility or reduce Europe's economic competitiveness.
"Curbing mobility is not an option, neither is business as usual. We can break the transport system's dependence on oil without sacrificing its efficiency and compromising mobility. It can be win-win," he claimed.
Christopher Monckton, Ukip's transport spokesman said: "The EU must be living in an alternate reality, where they can spend trillions and ban people from their cars.
"This sort of greenwashing grandstanding adds nothing and merely highlights their grandiose ambitions."
I wouldn't panic, the EU would be lucky to still exist within the next decade.
*shrug
Just more evidence that people who dwell in Ivory Towers eventually go insane from the isolation.
Clayton -
Siim Kallas is, by the way, an Estonian politician in a supposedly classical liberal party. Disgusting.
Well, he is a professional bureaucrat, having worked in the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union and as a president of Estonian Central Bank... I do not think it's ad hominem to say I am not surprised by his behavior given this background.
Hard Rain: I wouldn't panic, the EU would be lucky to still exist within the next decade.
My thoughts exactly.
"I wouldn't panic, the EU would be lucky to still exist within the next decade."
Yeah, its not like governments ever have the organization to ban things from our lives. oh wait...
"Cars will be banned from London and all other cities across Europe under a draconian EU masterplan to cut CO2 emissions by 60 per cent over the next 40 years."
Looks like the Nazis won after all.
No constant electricity supply... No cars. The EU is certainly turning Europe into a new Roman Empire in terms of technological regression. Pretty soon it will once again take about three weeks to travel from Rome to Paris.
"Pretty soon it will once again take about three weeks to travel from Rome to Paris."
Correction, 3 weeks for you peasants. Not 3 weeks for politicians in POWER.
The commissars are always more equal than others:
At what point can those of us in the West say that we are well and truly living in the awful dystopian future our stoned parents warned us about?
We've got the secret network of prison camps, God knows. We've got endless, pointless war against nobody and everybody. "Mainstream" political terms are taken to mean the complete opposite of what they actually mean. They are watching us. Now Europe is going dark and banning cars.
At least they had cars in the Soviet Union... They weren't very good, but they had them. Old-school communists are cracked in the head, but God-bless-them, they tried. The envirosocialism of the West doesn't even want us to try in principle, because it hurts mother Gaia. I feel like I'm living on a giant spherical mental home.