Road freight transport: 80% in Europe

Paris, 17 Feb, 2015.- The statistics of the European Union are strong. In the last decade, a shift towards road freight transport has
been recorded, especially in newer EU Member States. The highest
in reases in the share of road freight transport were observed in
Estonia (23 percentage points), Poland (19), Slovakia (19),
Slovenia (12) and Bulgaria (12). In contrast, 11 EU Member
States presented a shift towards more environmentally friendly
transport modes, most notably Belgium and Austria. In 2012,
road transport made up over half of freight transport in all EU
Member States, except for Latvia, where railway transport
accounted for the largest share (64%). High shares of rail transport
were also recorded in Estonia (47%), Austria (41%), Sweden (40%)
and Lithuania (38%). Considerable shares of inland waterways
were recorded in the Netherlands (39%), Belgium (24%) and
Romania (23%).

A significant decrease in rail freight transport performance was
recorded for 2012, with signs of recovery for 2013. The decline in
transport performance between 2011 and 2012 could be noticed
in a large majority of EU Member States. The main exception
was Portugal, with an increase of 4.3% of the total transport
performance. In absolute terms, Poland recorded the largest
decrease (–4.8 billion tkm between 2011 and 2012), however
the same country recorded the second highest rail transport
performance in Europe, with 49 billion tkm in 2012. Two other
countries reported absolute decreases of more than 1.5 billion tkm
over the same period, namely Germany (–3.3 billion tkm) and
France (–1.7 billion tkm).Ports in the EU-28 handled 3 733 million
tonnes of seaborne goods in 2012, a 1% decrease compared to 2011.
Between 2001 and 2012, four EU Member States presented
decreases in goods freight transport by sea.
The highest decreases were recorded in
the United Kingdom (–12%) and Denmark (–6%); in contrast
the highest increases were observed in Lithuania (96%) and
Slovenia (85%). Seaports in the Netherlands handled 543 million
tonnes of goods in 2012, while the United Kingdom, Italy and
Spain followed with 501, 477 and 422 million tonnes respectively.
These four EU Member States collectively handled 52% of total
EU-28 seaborne freight.About 13.3 million tonnes of air freight
were carried throughairports of the EU-27 in 2012.
Airports in Germany carried 4.2 million tonnes,
an amount considerably higher compared to
other EU Member States. The United Kingdom followed with
2.4 and France with 1.8 million tonnes.

From the smaller EU Member States, air freight was relatively high in the Netherlands, Belgium and particularly Luxembourg, which ranked as the seventh largest air freight transporter among EU Member States. In the last eight years six EU Member States showed decreased freight transport by air, particularly Greece (–37%) and Cyprus (–26%). On the contrary, the increase in Estonia was almost fivefold, followed by Latvia (+278%) and Slovakia (+155%). Denmark reported a significant increase in freight transport (8 000 tonnes in 2004, 166 000 tonnes in 2012).