Transport poverty continues to hinder access to essential services, economic participation, and social inclusion, particularly in rural, peripheral, and peri-urban areas across Europe. This strategic session will explore how multimodal, digitally inclusive, and community-oriented mobility systems can address this challenge, aligning with EU ambitions for a just and green transition.

Building on recent developments, including the Social Climate Fund and Commission Recommendation (EU) 2025/1021 on transport poverty, the session will investigate mobility solutions that combine availability, affordability, accessibility, reliability, and decarbonisation.

Panelists from policy, academia, civil society, local authorities, and the transport sector will explore opportunities to strengthen systems by addressing challenges such as maintaining essential infrastructure, using data to identify vulnerable users or users whose needs are often not fully reflected (e.g. women), enhancing smart mobility, and fostering coordinated governance.

The discussion will highlight the needs of vulnerable groups and the role of transport as a social equaliser and lifeline for remote and outermost regions. The session aims to highlight the research needs to combat transport poverty, so that research can support policymaking.

This session focuses on ways of improving road safety by drawing on lessons learnt from other transport sectors, such as aviation, rail, and maritime, as well as learning from leading road authorities and researchers.

The session will explore how Safe System Approach principles have been applied across the different transport sectors and how the differences in regulation, culture, and operations can shape their effectiveness.

The session will also examine different approaches to delivering safety practices, such as imbedding technologies like automation and AI, improving infrastructure, enforcement and working collaboratively and whether they have been successful.

Finally, the session will discuss the lessons learnt from putting into action the Safe System Approach, its impact on reducing the road fatalities and what additional developments are needed for further reduction in road fatalities and severe injuries, which has generally stalled during the last five years.

By identifying systemic barriers such as funding gaps, political will and public acceptance, the session aims to chart a path toward a more effective deployment of the Safe System Approach in road transport.

The transport sector faces a dual transition: green (climate goals) and digital (AI and data). AI is transforming how transport systems operate, creating new job roles while risking obsolescence for unprepared workers. This session explores how to build a skilled, adaptable, and inclusive workforce. Key themes include: (1) skills needed in an AI-driven ecosystem, emphasizing lifelong learning and cross-sector collaboration; (2) planning workforce development within environmental limits; and (3) ensuring ethical, human-centered transitions. The session calls for education reform, inclusive training, and policies that align digital fluency with ecological awareness. A just, resilient future in transport depends on empowering people – not just deploying tech.

The session will explore the current state of charging infrastructure in Europe, (including the deployment of public, semi-public and private charging points, in particular for Heavy Duty and commercial vehicles at logistics hubs and depots), also highlighting the areas of relevance for smart and bi-directional charging.

It aims to bridge R&I and policy to co-develop strategic priorities for the future, and discuss how to further support the rollout of charging infrastructure, in line with the Automotive Action Plan: accelerating the roll-out of charging, grid access, V2X, the 'European Clean Transport Corridor initiative', and where relevant the 'European Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Alliance', as well as financial instruments like the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Facility (AFIF).

The session would provide a strategic context for challenges and opportunities related to the deployment of charging infrastructure for EV and their integration to the grid and would contribute to the development of a comprehensive and sustainable transport system in Europe.

Ports and airports are no longer just transit points—they are critical R&I platforms for the clean energy transition, serving as producers, importers, distributors, and users of sustainable fuels such as hydrogen, methanol, ammonia, synthetic fuels, and electricity.

This session explores how these strategic nodes are being transformed into integrated, multimodal energy and data hubs that support decarbonised logistics and mobility chains. Smart energy management, digitalisation, and automation R&D will be addressed as key tools to enhance operational efficiency, reduce emissions, and enable real-time optimisation tested through collaborative pilots. Case studies from Europe and beyond will highlight successful, replicable and scalable approaches.

The session will also identify R&I challenges and outline the research, regulatory and investment frameworks needed to accelerate scale-up, emphasising modular innovation, cross-sector collaboration and EU partnerships contributions to climate-neutral and resilient transport infrastructure.

The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and related air pollution places zero-emission mobility at the center of urban mobility policies. This session explores strategies to decarbonise urban mobility through technology, integrated planning and behavioral change. It highlights that the transition goes beyond new tech, it requires transforming the mobility ecosystem to improve air quality, reduce noise and congestion, and ensure equitable access. Key themes include the role of electrified public transport (on rail, waterborne and road), integration of new and shared mobility services, and promoting multimodality to shift behavior and boost efficiency. The session also examines urban freight solutions, mobility hubs, and EV infrastructure challenges, emphasizing grid integration and spatial planning. Drawing on research and case studies, it presents pathways and trade-offs for achieving zero-emission transport.

Transport infrastructure is vital for European society—essential for vibrant economy, territorial cohesion, and social well-being. Yet, this critical sector faces a growing array of hazards that negatively impact its reliability, safety, and long-term viability. From ageing assets and climate change risks to cyber threats and geopolitical tensions, the resilience of Europe's transport networks is under remarkable pressure.

Many infrastructure systems are approaching or have surpassed their intended lifespan. This issue is made worse by deferred maintenance and uncertainty about future funding, which together increase their vulnerability. At the same time, the increasing frequency of extreme weather events is projected to steadily continue exacerbating infrastructure-related damages. New strategic demands—such as enabling military functions and ensuring continuity during cyber or biological disruptions—further stretch the capacity of transport systems to adapt and respond.

This high-level session will explore Europe's readiness to face a multi-hazard environment and examine how resilience can be embedded across the full life cycle of transport infrastructure—from planning and design to operation, renovation and upgrade, considering needs for standardisation actions and adaptation measures. The session aims to bridge research and policy to co-develop strategic priorities for 2027–2030.

The EU's reliance on material imports, the pressing need for improved resource productivity, and to reduce the carbon footprint are identified as critical issues that must be addressed. In response, the European Commission has introduced various strategies and regulations aimed at enhancing circularity including new battery regulations and proposals for stricter vehicle design and end-of-life management. Besides, collaboration across various sectors, including manufacturing, energy, finance, and waste management is required to achieve a true circular economy.

However, in their goal to embrace a Circular Economy approach, the European transport industries are facing challenges and boundaries and need to adopt new business models. The session will discuss advanced LCA and circular economy approaches for sustainable mobility solutions. Priorities for collaborative R&D will be discussed, as well as ideas for flagship projects to move Europe forward on its circularity ambition. This challenge is key for the competitiveness of transport industries and for the resources and technology sovereignty of Europe.

The session will explore how multimodal mobility services, for both passengers and goods, could connect better suburban and rural areas to city centres and urban multimodal passenger or freight hubs. The discussion will highlight the related challenges - e.g. low demand density and fragmented freight volumes, insufficient infrastructure and digital integration, planning at functional area level – while assessing the latest innovative solutions – e.g. public transport complemented by flexible transport services, shared mobility services and mobility on demand, light electric vehicles to railway stations, technological solutions to reach isolated territories such as drones, ferries or low cost rail-based solutions as well as asset and ride sharing services, logistics micro-hubs and cooperative models. Practitioners, local authority representatives and experts will present use cases and current practices, to identify also priorities for future research and innovation deployment.

Automation and connectivity have the potential to transform and bring major benefits to the transport of people and goods in Europe, improving safety, sustainability, capacity and inclusiveness. The session will discuss the challenges and opportunities of integrating efficiently automated vehicles into the transport system from both the technical and the socio-economic perspective, including the offer of new mobility services to users. Cross-sector and cross-modal collaboration with road, rail, air and waterborne transport will be addressed, as well as supporting concrete steps for large-scale implementation and deployment. Experience from the CCAM Partnership and Europe's Rail Joint Undertaking will be shared, alongside insights from related partnerships and initiatives, to explore how large-scale implementation can be supported across all modes. Panelists will discuss the next actions to be taken at EU level to make connected and automated mobility a reality for European citizens.

This session explores how digitalisation can enable more efficient, sustainable, and resilient logistics across rail, road, air, and maritime transport. It addresses real-world challenges in multimodal coordination, where fragmentation still hinders performance and decarbonisation. Digital enablers, such as Artificial Intelligence, trusted data sharing frameworks, digital twins, smart connected assets and advanced connectivity, are discussed as integrated tools supporting adaptive planning, interoperability and automation. The session highlights concrete use cases and insights from infrastructure operators, industry experts and innovation initiatives (such as Intelligent Access), to identify practical priorities for future research and large-scale implementation towards Net-Zero Logistics over the next two years.

The potential of AI is increasingly being harnessed in the mobility sector, enabling smart mobility systems and solutions, increasing safety and efficiency. AI is gradually used in a diverse way: decision-support to autonomous action, detection of events, generation of synthetic data...

AI possesses some key characteristics for application in numerous transport related domains. For example, AI plays a key role in sustainable transport by optimizing fuel use and routing. Likewise, AI helps improve the efficiency of transport systems by optimising traffic and transport schedules and anticipating user demand patterns. AI can also facilitate proactive fleet upkeep by enabling predictive maintenance.

Yet, several avenues for research in AI and mobility remain to be explored: the use of AI to improve the synchronisation of fragmented infrastructure and transport modes by integrating data from different actors and transport operators, the deployment of AI driven charging network optimisation, the management of vulnerabilities created by the increased deployment of AI in smart mobility systems, the use of AI in validation and verification processes, especially the certification mission-critical applications, etc...

This session will present use cases of AI for smart mobility systems and identify priorities for future research and innovation in this sector.