A Rocky Road: Tackling Carbon Emissions in Austria's Transport Sector.

With the European Climate Law, the European Union (EU) has recently raised the ambition of its climate action for the post-2020 period. This increased ambition intensifies the pressure on member state action in strategically-relevant sectors, such as the transport sector. At the Austrian level, the clear need to take climate action in relation to emissions of the transport sector has translated into several measures, including the introduction of a carbon pricing mechanism. However, these operational measures are not linked to a strategic framework, which steers measures in the same direction and allows for assessing their effectiveness. Operational measures, and also the recent carbon pricing mechanism, are therefore somewhat hanging in mid-air. The contribution explores how a link between the strategic and operational framework is missing and potentially affects climate action in the Austrian transport sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]