Unsustainable urban mobility in EU cities: explaining challenges of multi-level coordination

Pressed by climate emergency, rising population and congestion, EU cities are developing new solutions for sustainable urban mobility. For decades, the EU Commission has supported these initiatives in various ways, notably by setting mobility goals, regulating public procurement and air quality, establishing networks and funding. Yet, evidences show that EU cities are still clogged with traffic, pollution and noise. This project aims at explaining the reasons for unsustainable urban mobility, the related challenges of multi-level coordination and advances proposals for reform. To this purpose, it adopts a multi-disciplinary approach (law and sustainability governance) and combines it with an empirical qualitative research incorporating findings collected 1) through document analysis of EU and local policies and 2) semi-structured interviews with institutional experts at EU level and in two Dutch cities that are developing sustainable urban mobility experiments. This analysis delivers an evidence-based evaluation of EU policies’ impact to realise sustainable urban mobility.