 Welcome everybody at this 86th session of the Green Post Corona Talks, organized by the Green UP Foundation, I'm Dirk Hollermanns, Co-President of the Foundation, Director of the Flemish Think Tank OECOS and your host of these talks. And as we learned during previous sessions, people from all over Europe are following these sessions, which is of course great. You are following through live stream on Facebook and to make it an interactive session, I want to invite people to put questions in the chat box. You can also ask questions using Twitter with the hashtag Green UP Foundation. I see the questions here coming up. And so in the second part of this session, I will ask these questions to the speakers. The topic of this sixth session is the impact of the Corona crisis on mobility and of course also on the future of mobility. I don't have to explain to you that the Corona crisis has changed our intensity and also our modes of travel a lot. There are airplanes staying on the ground, this week I took a train here in Belgium from Ghent to Brussels, train was rather empty, and I see people using much more their bikes. And we all, as we are now experiencing, are working much more from home. And so we see next to some challenges also the positive aspects of working at home, not losing any more a lot of time while commuting. So let's say there's a challenge of the change patterns of mobility during this crisis. And also the question of what kind of mobility do we want after the Corona crisis. And in order to discuss this wide range of issues, we have three really inspiring speakers. First, I'm very happy to introduce the Enorak Wistler. She's Austrian Minister for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology. And I also want to add she was the first director of the Green European Foundation. After her we have Elke van den Berndt. She's Minister of the Government of the Brussels Capital Region, responsible for mobility, public works and road safety. Last but not least we have William Totz, Executive Director of Transport and Environment. I first want to give the floor to Leonor and I would like to ask her first to give a short insight on into the Austrian handling of the pandemic and then to give us a national perspective on what effects are on the transport sector and mobility. And of course we also would like to hear about the connection between a potential bailout of Austrian Airlines in this crisis with climate targets. So Leonor, you have the floor. Thanks a lot. I'm really happy to join you in these post-corona talks even though I fear still somewhere in the middle of corona but to have the perspective on what comes next and what comes afterwards and what do we take out of this situation I think is paramount and I think it's just the time now to start the discussion on that. I just come out of a meeting with a lot of people from civil society and also entrepreneurs who currently in the Austrian government we host these roundtables to get input, to get ideas, to get perspective on how do we now always have a hard time using this phrase use this crisis but in a way use this moment in time to go into the future towards managing a current economic and labor market crisis but also in using it as an opportunity to steer towards the goals that we share in Europe and that we are committed to in Austria climate neutrality by 2040 or for Europe by 2050. So I will only give you three, I would like to touch on three points. The first one is what kind of effects did Corona have in the COVID-19 crisis in Austria on the mobility sector on the transport sector. I will if you allow not spend a lot of time on the handling of the crisis because I will try to stay focused on the issue because otherwise I will talk here for half an hour and I'd be much more interested to hear also the Brussels perspective and the civil society perspective on this. So first point, what were the effects, what kind of emergency measures did we take and third point where to go from here, what are the challenges now. So on the first point I think as in many other countries and I probably we see similar patterns across Europe is of course COVID-19 had a massive impact on mobility. For the public transport sector we have 80 to 90% drop in passenger numbers during the intense phase of the lockdown. So that is of course has an effect on revenues, on ticket sales, on the economic situation of our public transport providers. But what I think challenges us all most is that it had an effect on the question of confidence in the safety of public transport systems. And so this I think is one of the things we need to confront on the way out of the crisis. The second is on freight transport of course we saw immense effects on the freight transport in general. What worries me most is also that rail freight transport, even though it was really stable during the crisis, even though when lorries were stopped at national borders, rail freight was up and running, we see that also here we have a drop in numbers, which in an already very tense situation for rail freight of course is a serious issue to confront and to work with. And the third and there I'm really looking forward to hear from Brussels, the third factor is of course our mobility forms changed and we see that people really have a big need for feeling safe when being mobile. And of course there's one way of doing that that's to get on your bike or to walk. No issue at all with social distancing and so active mobility of course that's a chance. But we also see in Austria that one of the big effects is on the use of covers. And so that of course is an issue not only because for the quality of life in cities, but also for navigating us directly into the... It seems we have lost Lionel for a second, I see the others so I hope Lionel will come back. Can you raise your hand? You're there. Lionel, do you hear us? Yes, it's clear we have a technical issue, I propose we switch to Elke and hope we can fix the technical problem with Lionel in meanwhile. So Elke on the ground, can I see you're with us? I hope it will work, if it's okay I will share my screen so we can have a power point. I'm afraid I don't hear you so I hope. Yes, yes, I hear you. Okay, that's because I have technical problems all day as well. So in one hand, so talking about the Brussels Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan and especially linked to COVID and the exit of this crisis, I would like to share with you some aspects. Perhaps, and I was curious to hear the rest of the story of Leonor, but I can already start with a part of it. So I will start with those bit a few numbers, telling what it's been like in Brussels for the moment. So we are in a near complete lockdown since the 17th of March, not a complete lockdown, but as far as and we're now starting the exit strategy. So our shops are reopening, schools are reopening. So during the lockdown periods, there was about 55 to 90% less of cars. That's a large scale because on the main roads, on the main access, it was about half of the traffic on than on a regular day within the neighborhoods where people lived was up to 90% less cars. So it is different, especially there in neighborhoods where people are living. We noticed that the car traffic almost dropped down. Same thing with the public transports. We were about 10 to 15% of the people using it. The capacity was about half, not that we limited capacity. We did all we could, but we had some measurement on social distancing on the public transport, but also measurements to protect the drivers, the bus drivers and the tram drivers that made us lower the capacity due to the COVID crisis. In the beginning, we noticed also bike traffic diminution, but very soon people started cycling, startling and walking. So people are walking and cycling a lot in Brussels. I hope this means that we have some health in current events as well. And in the weekends, it's up to three times the amount of cyclists we have. And so it's a huge increase. And we also see that now that we are restarting because we've been exiting now for a few days, we notice that people are using their bike far more for roads, for commuting to work, which is an interesting aspect. It's on the one hand, we think it's because of the fear of the public transport. People are a bit afraid of using public transport and we're also giving this measure to people. If you can't vote using public transport, please do so because we need to keep the public transport for those who don't have an alternative because you can't have full buses or full trains. So it hurts my heart to do a promotion. You can avoid it, but we do so in saying, please use your bike, go by foot if you can. And two-thirds of the replacements in Brussels are for a distance lower than five kilometers. So we are convinced that we have a possibility to do a model shift going to the bike or going to pedestrians. Since the exit strategy, we notice that the road traffic is restarting, but we're not at the full capacity. And although we have more people using their car probably because of their avoiding public transport, we do not have an over capacity in comparison to normal times. We're still below the general traffic in Brussels. So we will see what it gives, but we are afraid of a mobile shift to the car. We're afraid of people who are now, before using public transport, who now use their car. So that is really where we really focus on, okay, if you go for a model shift, make a model shift to going by foot or by bike, because that's the only way we can have a real exit. You cannot exit a health crisis by having more traffic jams, by having more air pollution, by having more noise pollution and creating another health crisis. So we really need to exit this health crisis with new habits and better habits and not by replacing it with other health problems that we know will occur if we just all go into our car, not speaking of all the fact that we don't have a space to accommodate all these cars. So it will cause even larger traffic jams than we already have. So we see now that there's an increase of traffic coming up and we'll monitor what it will give in the coming weeks. But what we know is that we really need action. So we took some measurements on different aspects and one of them is working with the neighborhoods. As I told before, we noticed that during the COVID crisis, about 90% of the traffic in the neighborhoods dropped down. But on the other hand, there was not more place for pedestrians and cyclists, although we have a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in the neighborhoods. So one of the first measurements we took was creating neighborhoods that could accommodate this. And this is actually by creating slow streets. The slow street is a street where pedestrians have an absolute priority where they can take the whole of the space and they can take the middle of the road if they want to. They have this right within the slow street. Cars are allowed, but they can go maximum 20 kilometers an hour. And I think this is really important because looking for the answer was also negotiating a bit with the emergency services. And they were saying like, please do not close down too many roads because that means that we will have to find new roads and we just want to be able to drive through the city as we know it. So we needed to find a balance between these serious amounts that we cannot ignore. On the other hand, creating neighborhoods with less impact of cars. And the example of Vienna was for us very inspiring. The moment that Vienna started putting this slow street system in action, we said, okay, this is what we need in Brussels as well. This is the basis we need to have neighborhoods that are less impactful. So we created an offer to our communes because in Brussels we have different communes. And for the moment we have about, we have more than 100 kilometers of streets that are in this system, this slow street system. Largely because of the central of Brussels, whole Pentagon, which is the historical heart of Brussels is in the system of slow street, the whole historical center. But next to that, we also have about 25 kilometers now in different kinds of zones also in very densely populated zones. Because we noticed that especially there, there were a lot of conflicts between pedestrians on the sidewalks, conflicts between joggers and pedestrians, conflicts on the roads when there was a line before the breakaway shop or anything. So we noticed that especially in the densely populated zones we really needed to create, give some air, give some space to people. And I see that there's a lot of enthusiasm about projects that are into it. If I did so, it was a temporary measure to respond to the health crisis, but it's not far from our mobility plan we had. And that's always the balance we took. It's like we're taking temporary measurements. Philosophy we're using is actually the same philosophy as we have for our region on the long term. So we do have a mobility plan. It's called Good Move. We just won the SMP award for it from Europe. So we're very proud of it. So and it will define the mobility and all the public areas for the next coming 10 years. And in that plan, we already had the idea of creating 50 neighborhoods in which we would slow down the traffic, make sure that was more place for people, for pedestrians, for encountering, for children playing. So the philosophy we use in having neighborhoods that are nice to live in, nice to be at was something that was in the plan. And we translated to the temporary measurements to respond to the challenges we encountered. So that was one of the first measurements we took. And another measurement we took is also diminishing the speed, making sure that people arrive more slowly. That's also something that's on the long term plan. And long term means from the 1st of January, 2022, the whole of Brussels will be at 30 kilometers an hour, except for some exceptions, but the idea was already to reduce the speed in order to avoid accidents and road casualties. And that's something that we saw was really, really necessary during this crisis, because although we almost had no traffic, the people in their crowds who were driving were driving incredible speeds. Because you had empty streets and it's almost inviting you to go speeding. And the accidents, a number of accidents during COVID crisis was in comparison to normal periods higher than otherwise, just because of the impact of an accident whenever there was an accident because of speeding. So reducing speed is something that is really important to save lives also during this COVID crisis. Another measurement we took was, so on the one hand we work with neighborhoods, on the other hand, we try to work with networks. So that's the two parts of the philosophy of our mobility plan. On the one hand, creating slow neighborhoods. On the other hand, creating networks for every mode of transport. We have a network for pedestrians, network for cyclists, the network for cars, the network for trucks. And in that way, having a smart idea of how to canalize the traffic. Within that view, we had some measurements taken. For example, the traffic lights were already centralized for a part in database. So we could control them easily from distance. And that way we could also make longer periods of green for pedestrians and cyclists. So very soon after one week, we changed the traffic light systems in order to give more green and longer green for pedestrians and cyclists. Also where we could to avoid this little button we have to put to ask for green lines. So it would be automatically on a green line to avoid touching buttons. So that's, it was an easy measurement to take, but it was important and you can really feel it in the streets that some places really now have the time to cross the street and you don't have to wait as long as in normal times. And I have to admit that I hope to keep the lights like that. Perhaps we will have to make some adjustments, but it's not okay that only in COVID crisis times we have more time for pedestrians. I think we need to for some part keep these measurements going on. Another thing if we talk about network is bicycle paths. So if we want to convince people to bike more and to go more by foot, we need to create pedestrian areas, but we also need to create cycling areas. One of the main reasons why people in Brussels don't cycle a lot is the security and the idea that it's not the idea, but it's the reality that it's not safe to cycle in Brussels because we have a lack of infrastructure. And there has been some investments last period, last 10 years in creating new bicycle lanes. So you start to see them popping up everywhere, but they're not connected. We often have kilometers of bicycle paths down one kilometer, that's nothing. And then it starts again. But for cyclists, if you own if only two-thirds of your project is secured, then you don't feel secured. So you really need to make a network, a connected network. And that's why we now focused on creating 40 kilometers extra bike lanes, and especially connecting those missing lanes, making sure that there is a missing link. We speed up the measurements to connect those. And we hope in that way to make really a shift to a bike. And there's in Brussels a lot of, well, if you compare Brussels to other cities like Amsterdam or Marseille or Utrecht, we see that the bike is really underused and we really have a potential there. Not only after COVID in general, we know that's where we have a lot to win. We'll see what it gives, but plenty of people now say, I want to test those new bicycle lanes. And that gives the first, people are testing it, say, okay, it works. And perhaps I can go to work now and we hope in that way to accommodate a modal shift in Brussels, which is really urgent. Of course, we keep on investing in public transport. It's not that it's, and that's the difficulty we say, if you can go by foot or bike, but we are trying to have the public transport for those who need it. And many people need it. Half of the people in Brussels do not own a car. Many of them do not own a bike. So public transport is for many people the only way to do a longer distance than by foot. So we need to keep up giving extra cleaning, making sure that the capacity is high enough, making sure that every measurement of safety is taken. And last week, we had a lot of actions of our public transport because they were afraid of the impact of the exit strategy and they're afraid of having full buses and everything. So it's a really difficult situation for the moment, but we hope to offer as much as public transport as possible. So those people who don't have an alternative, have a safe way of replacing myself and the possibility to keep social distancing on a bus, on a tram and make sure that we continue offering this public service. We also do a lot of communication and making sure we have all possible answers, making shorter services for cyclists, making sure that the roadmap is in progress. So everything, the programs like cycling for beginners, many people in Brussels, don't know how to cycle in a city because cycling in a city is something else than cycling on the countryside for pleasure. So these courses for cycling for beginners or learning to cycle or to bike in an urban context are put in place at a higher risk, if longmate list for them, making sure that everybody who has a bike that needs to be repaired knows where they can go to have them repaired. So all these kind of measurements you could do to support bicycle use were put in place in these weeks and reopens again. There are some communication campaigns. Today we start also a bike for Brussels campaign on keep on cycling. Now we learned it. So that's an important part of our COVID response in hoping to make this model shift. I'm going a bit faster so that you can afterwards ask some more questions. And I think I'd like to finish this overview of what we're doing in Brussels now, by thanking our team because it seems easy. And in the beginning it's okay, just create some bicycle lanes, but it is incredible difficult to do something now because also in the administration, also with all the entrepreneurs everywhere, COVID crisis is active, everywhere we have more people ill than in other times, everywhere we have difficult measurements to work, it's harder to have meetings because everything is online and putting things in place is more difficult than ever. But on the same time, we are speeding up and saying now it's the time to act, now we need to take some measurements so there's an incredible amount of effort being done within the administration, within the public transport to make everything possible. And I hope we will not forget that that behind some measurements that seem easy, there's already always a lot of hard work of people in very difficult circumstances. But in order not to talk too long and keep enough time for some question and remark, I will give the room to the next person directly. Okay, thank you very much. It's really a great talk. It's really gives us a warm heart to see how all the things you are doing and it's also good you mentioned that behind every measure there are people working very hard and one thing I already noticed is you said Vienna is a city of inspiration. So this is the good connection to come back to Vienna. I'm very happy the technical things are prepared. So I'm happy to give you back the floor. Yeah, I'm very sorry for this interruption but so I got a chance to actually listen to the inspiring example of Brussels because I think that's exactly the best positive use that we can make out of these European exchanges that we learn from each other's examples and also it's nice to see how ideas spread across Europe. Yeah, I tried to pick back up where I left off. So I described a bit what was the effect of COVID on our transport and mobility system. So on public transport, on freight transport rail freight and also on the question of confidence in public transport and increased use of cars. So maybe just to go quickly into other points I've wanted to mention the first question is what did we do as an emergency response on the one hand side? And now what do we need to do for the short, medium and long term to get back on track towards a sustainable mobility system in many ways. So how did we respond in the first place? So of course, one of our main tasks was to keep public transport up and running. That's also what Elke just described. So we did worked a lot with emergency contracts. We made sure that operators cooperated on the rail system and so that we really were able to keep up train and public transport services at all time in all situations and keep a backbone of public transport mobility. Of course, at the moment we started opening up. So we are now also almost completely back up and running. So it's the, of course pressure on public transport people coming back. The fears that come with it are, is it safe to use public transport? We also had to respond to that. So of course we went back to normal timetables on public transport. Even we are not yet back to normal passenger numbers. But so we increased the frequency again of the services. We also increased a lot cleaning this infection on public train and public transport services. So also to restore confidence that it's a safe environment. And what we also did, we came up with a code of conduct. I have no better translation for it. I fear which we developed together with the operators and the trade unions to make sure to have some simple guidelines and rules that if you want to or need to use public transport, what to do? Yeah, simple rules, apart from the legal obligation to wear a mask, we introduced that in all public transport services. But also simple behavioral rules that can increase and can help all of us using public transport to feel safe and to also use it safely. We tried to avoid saying don't use public transport if you don't have to. So what we did instead was two things on the one hand side, of course, to encourage companies to still keep people in home office and to enable flexible work time wherever possible so that the main challenge to avoid peak hours in public transport can be more easily handled. And we also did that, for example, with schools. Schools are taking shifts. We only have half of the students back in schools every day. So there's two shifts of students which also eases pressure on public transport. And apart from that, of course, you cited the example, we tried to do everything that we could from a national level to make it easier for people to keep the distance when walking and cycling. So slow roads, as you mentioned, we changed the traffic code to actually make that possible and some of the other things that many other cities did, but I'm really impressed by the Brussels example. So congratulations what you managed to do there. Of course, we also, on freight transport, we increased subsidies. We made sure that we keep systems in place for the time after the crisis because this is exactly what we need. We need a strong public transport backbone, a strong freight transport backbone for the mobility systems of the future. So we need to make sure that these systems actually survive and survive in a good state these weeks and months of crisis. Which kind of leads the way out of this crisis. In many countries, I think all over Europe and also in the European Union, of course, the discussion shifts now to the question of what kind of stimulus packages do we need? How do we get people back to work? Also in Austria, we have high numbers of unemployment. We have a lot of people on more than a million people on reduced work time. So the question on how to both get out of the labor market and the economic crisis and to use this opportunity now to confront the climate crisis, that's what really keeps us busy at the moment. So we're just now designing our Austrian economic stimulus package, where one of the key aspects will be to invest in future proof infrastructure. So that of course means train infrastructure, that of course means also cycling infrastructure and everything that we need as a backbone for our future mobility systems. And I speak a lot these days about the double or triple dividends that we can get out of these measures. We create jobs locally. If we build train tracks in Austria, 70 to 80% of the business goes to small and medium enterprises in Austria. So it's really something that stimulates local economy and employment in the region. We create and safeguard future proof jobs because we will need a lot of these in the future. And we guarantee infrastructure that we need in the future to especially also in the regions that's a big focus that we have in making sure we reach our goal towards climate neutrality 2040. So that's something we do a lot in terms of infrastructure, but also in terms of immobility of transport needs for rural areas, a lot of focus on research and innovation at the moment. But there's one nexus that you asked me to comment on between emergency response and long-term pathway that's of course in the airline industry. We have, as all the carriers across Europe are grounded, Austrian airlines is grounded and applied for state aid for around 800 million euro from the Austrian state, which is a lot of money. I don't need to say that. So we have rules for emergency aid and we gave out a lot of emergency aid at the moment to make sure that small businesses around the corner that had to close down survive this crisis. But of course, if we look at one company that needs several hundred million euros state aid and is a company that's challenged a lot in terms of climate crisis, then we were very clear also in the Austrian government this needs conditionality. So we have defined basically three sets of conditions. The one is of course that the question of a future transport system and the role that air traffic has in that for an economic area like Vienna, like Austria, there needs to be a perspective on what is that role. We need a perspective for safe jobs in a sector that's currently competing on unsafe and social dumping jobs. So that's the second thing in the third area is the question of climate action because no need to say airline industry is especially challenged by a pathway towards climate neutrality. And there's several things we're currently discussing. Of course, also here I don't need to say modal shift towards train wherever possible on short-haul flights is one of the questions but also technological solutions, the regulatory framework. I think there's a lot of things that we can do now and where we can do things right at this point in time even though it's a difficult point in time even though the industry is challenged but if we waste the chance now I think it becomes much more difficult in the future. And I've been very clear on that from the beginning on but I'm very happy to see that actually with the deal in France, with the deal between Air France and the French state we now have an example of how it can be done also in practice which is I think or can be an example also for many other countries. In our case we will still be negotiating for some time. I fear there will be no quick solution because it's a complicated negotiation and it's also if there will be a solution I cannot say at the moment but there is a solution. It needs to be one that is good for safe jobs and it's good for a pathway towards climate neutrality. And I'll leave it with that because otherwise we for sure have no time for questions. Okay, Lionel, thank you very much for your contribution. I think it's very important what you said that this is the time to fix the current problems but also to install the infrastructure for the future. So your example of new rail tracks that also provide jobs in the region is really I think a very inspiring example. I'm now very happy to give the floor to William from a point of view of an NGO to give a comment on mobility in this crisis and also especially how can we make mobility more sustainable after this crisis? So William, you have the floor. Thank you very much, Dirk. Thanks a lot for inviting me and thanks for focusing in the discussion on transport. I think it's an excellent choice not just because it's my job but also because I think genuinely a lot of extremely interesting things are happening in the decisions that people like Leonora and others will be taking in the next two, three months are going to determine whether we can be successful in the transport transformation in the next years or not. What I would like to do in the next couple of minutes is zoom in on what I think are the three most prominent topics. One first one is cities. Basically the question is can we keep the skies blue? Can we make some of those temporary measures? Can we make them permanent? Then go to aviation and then finally talk about the car industry, which is calling for a lot of public support. Maybe we can start with cities. And I live in Brussels, so I listened with great interest to minister Van den Brant and I've been really impressed with what she's been doing. I think the starting point for many of us on this call is that over the last two months, I think we have seen what life in the city could or should be like. You walk around, there's no pollution, there's no congestion, you can cycle around with your baby behind you and you're not afraid, you're actually enjoying it. And this is, it's not just important because it's pleasant and it's less pollution. It's also important because cities are, cities are from a climate perspective, the perfect place for people to live. So it is in our common interest to make cities livable spaces and make cities successful. Now, I think we need to realize that what's happened over the last two months and now the exit phase, that none of this is structural. People will want to go back to normal. People, there's a great desire in business and in our own lives to go back to normal, to the way things were before. And I think if you look at what's happened in places like Wuhan, where all of this started, you see that actually because of, the concerns people have around public transport that there's a huge rise in car traffic, in motor traffic and that the model share of cars in places like Wuhan has increased very significantly. And I think over, in the next two, three months, we have a big fight on our hands to essentially, and it's a big work, but to avoid a congestion and pollution hell when all these measures are lifted. And I think in a way that the reopening of the schools after summer, which in this country is the first of September, is D-Day because that's the moment where hopefully the pandemic will be temporarily under control and when life returns to normal. At that moment, I think we need to make sure that these temporary measures that they become permanent. We're gonna be doing, so we're an NGO, but we also do a lot of research and we're gonna do a lot of modeling to figure out for all those cities, like places like Brussels, but also Paris, Berlin, London, Valencia and also places in Central and Eastern Europe, try and figure out sort of what are your options and what mix of measures is going to allow you to contain both the, satisfy both the health needs, the mobility needs and the pollution needs. I think we actually have quite a unique opportunity to accelerate a trend that has been going on for 30, 40 years and the hope is that from September and the months after that we immerse in what is a new normal in European cities. That is I think what we will be working for as the transport and environment movement with our members. Now let's turn to the aviation industry. It would be easy to think that the aviation industry is on its knees across Europe and across the world. Actually, they are asking for public money. This is a sector that always prided itself on. They were liberalized, they didn't need anybody's help. We are the airlines. Now they are begging for public money to survive and there's no, there's no shadow on Freud here. They are indeed very, very hard hit and they employ lots of people. So it's not something to be pleased about. What I think we should realize though is that the airline industry has an incredible ability to rebounce. And if you look at what's happened in the last 60, 70 years since commercial aviation really took off after the Second World War, there have been so many crisis and every time the airline industry was hit and for a few years it was a problem that they always bounce back. And I think below the surface what's happening right now, I think, I heard the minister talk about the importance of social rights, good working conditions but I don't think that's what's happening. I think as part of the bailout discussions a whole number of airlines are going to restructure and they're going to try to improve their bottom line to survive in what is going to be an extremely tough economic environment the next two, three years. And that means that you're actually looking at a Ryanairization of the airline industry and Ryanairized, that's not a word but a Ryanair style aviation sector is going to be extremely lean and in two, three years time they'll be back. So I think it is absolutely true what the minister said is that we need to seize the moment. We come out of a period where there was a lot of pressure on the airline industry both at national and at European level. Now is the moment to say, guys, if you want money you'll have to pay tax and a number of good things have happened for example in Austria, but we can do more. They still don't pay carers in tax. And I think what is also really important we need a pathway towards decarbonized flying because flying is not going to disappear whether we like that or not. And that means that we need to push the airlines and the aviation industry on the use of zero emission fuels of sustainable alternative fuels. And that requires regulation. I think now is the moment to make that very clear to the industry. I think if we do that, we might actually arrive at a, we might actually look back at 2020 in a couple of years time as the moment where European aviation emission speaks. I think that is unique in itself because I don't think many of us would have expected that this would have been possible just three months ago. Turning to the car industry the car industry is of course not the aviation industry has and the shipping industry, they are very fast growing but the car industry and personal mobility is responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector. And they're the ultimate climate scenery in a way. For 25 years we've been talking about the need to move to a different type of mobility smaller cars, more efficient cars. But what we got was diesel gates. And so the good news was that in the last few years there were a number of glimmers of hope. I think diesel gate was in Europe was really a turning point. It was, I think the end of the car industry's iron grip on political system and on policy making. I think another really important thing that happened is the rise of Tesla and, you know, I'm not a great fan of Elon Musk and his Twitter tirades but it is true that what he has done is he's shown that there is an alternative to the combustion engine. Similarly, what China has done over the last five to 10 years, a determined industrial policy away from the combustion engine has shown the Germans, the French, that this might actually be the future of the car industry to move away from the combustion engine. And I think all of this culminated in a number of countries announcing that they want to move away from the combustion engine, even places like Spain with a big car industry, places like France, places like the UK where they were talking about bringing forward the end date for the combustion engine. And so, you know, there was actually, there was a glimmer of hope for the first time. I've been with the ENE for 10 years in the last years for the first time we thought we can actually do this. We can actually decarbonize the car industry. Now, of course, with the whole corona crisis, the political context changes these, you know, million, you know, hundreds of thousands of people are out of work. The car industry is a big employer and they'll be calling for support and they'll do what they do best, which is to pretend that they are victims and that they are in needs of lots of support. I think the key thing for us to do in this new political context is I want to recognize that the car industry is an important industry and that they will, just like other industries, need to be supported in the recovery phase. But the support needs to be targeted and it needs to be conditional. The first and most important condition is that the car industry needs to comply with all the CO2 and other environmental regulations that we've adopted in the last years. And the most important of those is the European car CO2 regulation. That is the regulation that is driving essentially investment in electric vehicles in Europe. And, you know, the car lobbies have already started saying, oh, you know, couldn't you postpone this a little bit? It needs to be very clear. You can get support, you can get loans if you have liquidity needs. But the condition is you comply with the regulations. We're also going to strengthen regulations as part of the European Green Deal. Plus the money that you get, you'll invest it in the future, not in the past. I think if we do that, we can, you know, we can actually accelerate the transition. I think I'm already speaking quite long because I will not, you know, spend too much time on the scrappage schemes, but this is one of the most, you know, prominent discussions at this time in Germany, in Spain, in France, in many countries across Europe. The car industry is calling for billions of euros in public support to buy new cars. There's a leaked document from the commission that suggests that the commission is considering spending 20 billion euros on car purchasing in 2021 and 2020. This would be 2022. This would be the biggest car purchasing, public car purchasing program that the world has ever seen, I think. For the mentally scrappage schemes are a bad idea. They are, they're not the way, they're not the way we should be spending our money because, you know, it's a short-term blaster on the economy that it doesn't structurally change, you know, to strengthen the economy in the long run. But I think, and I think we also need to recognize that, you know, this is what we did during the last crisis and it's likely that it will happen again. So directing this type of support to the right type of vehicles and certainly, you know, making sure that it doesn't go to polluting SUVs, I think this is a big part of the fights of the coming months. I wanna, you know, I wanna keep it at that and just a few words of conclusion. First, I wanna reiterate what I said at the beginning. I think it's really all to play for in the next two, three months. When it comes to bailouts, to the airline industry, when it comes to the car industry, to our cities, there's so much at stake. I think we have a great opportunity. I think this crisis could be an accelerator, but it depends on the choices that we make. But last, not least, we need to act fast, we need to act boldly, but we also should not forget that, you know, this is not just an opportunity. This is a huge economic crisis and it's affecting millions of people in a really, you know, in a really terrible way. And I think as Europeans, we need to understand that certain countries are more affected than others and that we'll need a degree of solidarity to help those countries emerge from the crisis. Because I think, you know, we can dream of a European Green Deal of new regulations of climate neutrality in 2040, 2050. But I think it's going to be hard to build that dream on an economic ruin in the South. And so in that sense, the Franco-German proposal for a 500 billion euro recovery fund and the proposal that the commission is making next week for a hopefully a green recovery is going to be extremely, extremely important. Because that's, you know, it's 500 billion euros that can be invested in the places that need it and also in the future, in a green recovery. So I'll leave it at that. Thank you very much, William. I think what you said is very important. The coming two, three months are really crucial for what kind of direction we want to steer our society. Meanwhile, I'm very happy. A lot of questions are coming in the chat box. I have a first one for Elke. It's concerning the bicycle lanes. People are asking, will they be permanent? The cycle lanes you have now installed. So, Dirk, I didn't hear you. Okay, I will. It's as permanent as the bicycle lanes. Because people are wondering these new cycle lanes and also some closure, some roads, are they permanent? Yes and no. So on the one hand, for the bicycle lanes, on the one hand, we took all the plans we had to put them in place. So from some places, we knew we wanted to put a bicycle lane. We already started making those plans. So those will be first temporary, but BTI made them permanent. On some places, it's really temporary measurements. We have some places where we just took a car lane, we'll put a bicycle lane and we know that it can't stay like that in a permanent basis. But because we work on a network that we already identified before, so in our mobility plan, we already identified the main network we needed for bicycle lanes. And because we're working on those, we know that within this political term, we will put some permanent infrastructure on those lanes. But you can go fast, we can go fast with temporary measurements, but if you want to do something permanent, we need permissions and we need, there's several procedures we need to go through, but I hope that if they're a success, they can stay and so far, they're a success. I have no knowledge of a bicycle lane that was put in place and didn't attract bicycles. So if it's not necessary to make it permanent, we won't do so, but I'm quite convinced that they will become permanent or that there will be a demand to make them permanent. That's why we always started with our long-term plan or mobility plan and took measurements that were aligned with that so that we know that although it's temporary measurements, we know we have a permanent answer on the long term as well. Okay, thanks. There's another question. I think for Leonor, but maybe also for William, it's on the state aid for airlines declining CO2 ceiling and it's focusing on the use of which kind of fuels, biofuels, if we use biofuels, there's a risk that global food security will be undermined. Wouldn't it be why should you impose use of synthetic fuels made of hydrogen and renewable electricity? So this is a question of what kind of fuels do airlines have to use in the future to become sustainable? Maybe William, I'll start and you. I would want to react to something you said also on the airline industry anyway. The question, what's the future of the airline industry and do we have a Ryanair style airline sector or not? And of course, we have Ryanair in Vienna Airport is a very competitive airport. We have Austrian airlines Lufthansa, but we have a lot of low-cost carriers as well. And Ryanair already announced they will come back with a 99 cent flight from flight offers from Vienna. So going to wherever, Brussels, London, Paris for 99 cents. So of course that cannot be the future of flying and of the industry. So what makes me hopeful though, even though it's gonna be tough discussions, it's gonna be no easy solutions, is that especially in this crisis we have seen what state regulation and what a regulatory framework and can do also in a short-term can do and how important it is that we act also as a state, as politicians. So if we take money in our hands to support one company, then at the same time we need to make sure that the regulation and the regulatory framework that we set for the sector, and there is only so much we can do nationally. But what we can do nationally to actually do so in order to support also a future business model for the industry that as a business model also in social terms can be sustainable. And of course there's a lot of pressure on social rights. There's a lot of pressure on labor standards, but that's why I insist that any part of deal with the airline industry also needs to have that very strongly in mind because we have a total cost for society for these bailouts and that's also the costs that we have in terms of the situation for the employees. In terms of fuels, of course the problems that the person who asked the question are there very clearly. So in our case we're thinking more in the direction of synthetic fuels, but at the same time also there, we have to acknowledge it's not endless in supply. We need the energy to also produce them. In the end it needs to be renewable energy. So I mean, it's also there. We have systemic limits to what we can do. So everything we can do now and also there I would really like to support William the next months are crucial. And to actually get the modal shift right draw from some of the lessons that we've learned like we're doing now an international conference in video conferencing. So to actually draw from some of the lessons that we had also in terms of mobility patterns and behavior to actually move forward and not back to the future. Actually go to the future and not back to the future. Something else, sorry, I have to say the Green Deal is not a dream. I think it's a necessity and I think we need to label it as such also, but I know why I wanted to doubt the question that this needs a lot of solidarity to actually put it in place. Okay, thanks. I see we again have a kind of technical issue because at this moment I only see Leonore and now she's disappearing. So she's back and William is also back. We can still hear you. That's fine. So William, I give you the floor for this question on airplanes and fuels. I think it's an excellent question. I think the starting point is that we should indeed shift short-haul flights to rail wherever we can and to other options, but we need to acknowledge that the vast majority of emissions caused by aviation are not short-haul emissions. The vast majority is long-haul emissions and if we're going to oblige companies like Air France to abandon their short-haul flights, that's going to cut their emissions by less than 1%. Actually, in the case of Air France, our calculations suggest 0.3%. So that's very limited. That's not to say that we shouldn't pursue it. We should definitely pursue it. So we need the fuels to decarbonize the long-haul flights. Clearly, those fuels cannot be crop-based biofuels for fuel security reasons, but not just for food reasons. Also, just from a land-use perspective, it is irresponsible to be using good agricultural land to grow stuff that we're then going to burn. That is in a world with a growing population that's just not the way forward. There's a limited potential for so-called advanced biofuels that are based on wastes and residues, but that is really a very limited potential because those wastes and residues are already being used in other sectors and obviously we want less wastes, not more wastes in the future. So it is true that the one remaining credible option to decarbonize the aviation are in the synthetic fields, but as the minister has said, it is also not a perfect or easy solution. It's true, you need lots of renewable energy to produce those. It is inefficient, but I think it is the only, it is the only conceivable technological pathway. So we need to pursue it. If we take the Paris Agreement seriously, we need to pursue it, but I also think that simultaneously, we need to keep pushing the aviation industry and in particular the builders of aircraft to innovate and companies like Airbus are receiving billions of dollars in subsidies and they're gonna receive billions of euros in indirect subsidies because governments are gonna ask their companies to renew their fleet and buy new aircraft from Airbus. There should be conditions there as well. When are we finally gonna see some investment in hydrogen aircraft? Why is Airbus abandoning its hybrid aircraft plants? So it's a combination of measures, but ultimately personally, I believe we'll need innovation as well or stop flying. Okay, I have here a question which is more on the city level or maybe also on the national level. It's inspired by what happened in Luxembourg. Should governments go as far as making public transport free to discourage individual car use? So how can Leonore, what's your view, your take on this? And Kudu, do you want to start? Here, please. Okay, you take the floor. I'm sorry, I have a bad connection. So the last part I had was whether we see this, we should have a policy for reducing cars. So that was the question, I'm very sorry. The question was, should we do the same as in Luxembourg, make public transport free? Yeah, there's a huge debate on making public transport free. For the moment, it's a budgetary question as well. If we make it free, it would cost us a lot of money, which we cannot invest in something else. And we also have done some studies and impact studies where the results were that if we would make it free, it would put people who normally bike or walk onto the public transport. So it would not have a modal shift from cars to public transport, but a modal shift from active modes to public transport. And with all the love for the public transport I have, that's not the way we want to go. We want to encourage people by car doing the way for public transport or by foot or by cycling. But those who are cycling and walking, let's keep on, continue to convince them to cycle and walk. So we have a policy of very cheap subscriptions for certain people. So those people who live in poverty can have a subscription for eight euros for the whole public transport. But we do not want to make it for free for everybody because we think that's having a reverse impact on the modal shift we're trying to achieve. We also want to make it for free for youngsters who are people until 25 years old. So that's before they buy their first car, we promote it as much as possible, but the general price, the general free public transport is not considered as the best options for Brussels for the moment. I hope that's it. See you again. Yes, thank you for your answer. I can maybe just add very quickly to that because our thinking goes a bit in the same direction. So what we are doing, I think is basically three pillars. We want to encourage a modal shift. So what do we need? We need better infrastructure, be it in train infrastructure, be it also decarbonized bus fleets and whatever comes with it. So, but better infrastructure, better frequency. So reliability, efficiency, making sure that there is a integrated frequency where in every, that's our plan, in every community in Austria, you have a public transport connection once an hour. And the third pillar is of course affordability. And so one of the key projects of this government is an Austrian wide flat rate ticket for all public transport. And so we're working very hard in the ministry to actually make that a reality by next year. And the key idea is that in one of the regions in Austria, you can use all public transport for one euro per day on a yearly basis. So 365 euros for two euros a day. You can use, you have public transport systems in two provinces and the nationwide ticket for three euros a day. So a bit more than 1,000 euros to use all the public transport in Europe. That's one of the key in Europe, that would be in Austria. So that's one of the key projects of this legislature. And we're working very hard because it's service quality, but it's also service affordability that will maybe help us make the shift in our minds in terms of what is fixed costs for transport. Currently people usually think car is fixed cost. So you pay for what the car costs and that's your monthly mobility budget. And then you pay for extra trips or for the train trip or whatever. And we need to reverse that. We need to make sure that the public transport is your fixed cost. So that is affordable enough so that a monthly ticket for all the public transport, a yearly ticket for the public transport, that's your fixed mobility costs. Then once you need a car, you share one, you rent one, you get one. But I think to make public transport more affordable will also help us to make that shift in how we look at transportation costs. And that will get us a long way. Okay, thanks for this clear explanation. There's another question concerning the decarbonization of the car industry and the shift from also fuel cars to electric cars. So how can we stimulate the demand of electric cars or hydrogen cars to meet climate goals? Maybe William, you can start first evening around. Okay, that's a short question with a long answer, but I'll try to stick to a few points. I think there's two fundamental things. On the one hand, it's about supply. If you went into a showroom three years ago, two years ago, one year ago, and you told your car dealer that you wanted to buy an electric Volkswagen, an electric Peugeot or whatever, they would have told you, no, sorry, we don't actually have those models. And even if they in theory sold those models, they were unfortunately not available. And the reason for that is that the currency for a very long time actually did not want to sell those cars because they like selling internal combustion engine cars, which is what they have done for the last 100 years. So forcing the car makers to invest in those vehicles, to build those vehicles and to sell those vehicles is the first and I think most important pillar. Once you can go to your dealer and you can buy the ID tree, which is the electric version of the Golf at around the same price of the Golf, then these sort of transition to electric vehicles becomes a lot easier. You can't subsidize your way to, if the vehicles cost 60,000 euros compared to 15, 20,000 euro diesel petrol car, you can't compete, but we're getting closer to cost parity. The second thing is of course tax. People's choice of car is by and large, determined by the purchase cost. People don't think about how much they will be spending on road tax, annual road tax. They don't think about how much they will be spending on fuel. They only look at the price of the vehicle when they buy it. So a system like a bonus model system where you pay more for a diesel or petrol car depending on how high its emissions are, you get a bonus for buying an electric car. This is proven to be most effective way to guide people towards electric vehicles at the point of purchase. And then of course, once you got electric car, you're gonna be using it for seven years. And then after seven years, you're very unlikely to wanna go back to petrol or diesel because, you know, you've made the investment charging, you're used to it. Third point is charging. That is of course extremely important, especially in an urban environment. So we need to make it extremely easy for people to install charging infrastructure in condominiums, in apartment blocks. And this is not just about money. It's also about administrative rules about the fireman telling you that you can't install more than one charging point. These types of rules will need to be changed if we want to quickly transition to electric vehicles. I think those I would say are three key blocks and a lot of forts and that's company cars. 50% of cars in Europe are sold to companies. Companies care about total cost of ownership, not purchase costs. Electric cars are perfect for companies. So, you know, this is the market where you can make most progress quickest. And this is also a market that is extremely sensitive to fiscal signals. So I would say if you wanna go, if you want to go fast on electric cars, look at company cars. Okay, thanks. I want to invite Heno or Elka to also contribute to this question. I don't think I need to add a lot because a lot has been said, maybe one aspect to just add on the company car question. And we are of course working on the question of fiscal incentives in that direction. But also we're looking to go one step further for fleets, like the taxi fleet or car sharing fleets. Everything that brings electric mobility into anything that's fleet will also be in a, will go directly into a used car market. And of course, once we have a used car market for electric vehicles, we also, it goes a lot faster to actually have electric cars as a standard option also in that market. So I can agree to everything that William has said, a lot of the things we're trying to work on at the moment in Austria. Okay, thanks. Elka, I'm sure you're doing of resources with less cars, but then probably also more electric cars if there are cars. I think I want to take up on the first one because of course we prefer electric cars to fuel cars. But on the other hand, replacing all the existing cars by electrical cars will not solve all our problems. We will still keep having congestions and huge congestions and having road security issues. So focusing on shared cars and on less ownership of cars is something that we will continue on focusing on. And we see the shift is going on. Half of the households in Brussels does not own a proper car. We see it as a rising interest in shared cars, which is very important for the traffic jams but also for public space. We have a lot of public space in Brussels that is provided for the single use of cars, parking spaces and car lanes. And 70% of the public space in Brussels is now for parking space or by car lanes. And if you want to create a city where it's more place for people, where you have more bike lanes, more pedestrian areas, we will need to make other choices. So a shared car can provide for around 15 families. So pressing on these alternatives is something that we will do. But that's the first part of your question, Jake. The second is if we do have cars, there will always be cars in Brussels or still for a few years. Let's make them electrical. I think I can agree on that one. The revolution in Brussels is a real problem and the health issues concern for that as well. So making sure that we invest in it. And what helped a lot, we noticed, is the directive that the European Commission took in saying that the car producers, they need to have, for the whole production of all their cars, they have this goal of, I think, 93 emission limits. And that makes that they need to sell a lot of zero emission cars. And it makes the car creators, the car, the fabrics create cars that are affordable. And I think that's really important because if you have to pay 50,000 euros to buy an electric car, it's not for the general public in Brussels. I don't know about the other countries, but we need to have some affordable pricing also for the general public. I do agree on everything that's been said on the fleet and company cars, but working on this individual car and making sure that they have an affordable price category is something that's only now coming up. We see now the Zooloy and some of the cars coming up that are affordable for the general public. So that helped a lot. And we think that this European directive behind it is pushing a lot while it's not, there's not huge communication about it, but we do see the difference. And one thing we need to work on as a Brussels government is providing the charging infrastructure. We have a lack of charging infrastructure in Brussels. So we're now putting a turbo on creating public charging infrastructure because many people in apartments do not have their own garage or their own place to charge their cars and making sure that in the public space or in shops or in car parks, they are born to charge a car is something that we need to invest as well as a region. Okay, thank you very much. Although I know we are all in favor of slow mobility, this session went very fast. So we are already at the end of this very interesting talk. I want to thank all three of you, Leonor, Elke and William. I'm sure we could have a second session and who knows within a few months when things are getting better and we have more railway tracks in Austria and more cycle lanes in Brussels. We can have another talk, but at this moment, thank you very much and I wish you all a pleasant evening. Thank you. Thanks for having this discussion. Bye-bye to Brussels. That was great. Thank you and good luck to you both, Elke and Leonor. You too. Keep on changing. Thank you for this interesting organization and let's hope we meet again in real life somehow in the near future. We're allowed to go out again. Yeah. So recording has stopped. So we're not live anymore.