The following storyline was derived from integrating results from all scenarios. The figures mentioned can be found in the appendices of this report.

The EU-27 could have 486 million inhabitants in 2050, or 545, depending on the scenario, but the European Union could reach 744 million, with successive enlargements. Eastern economies catching up the economic development levels of the EU-27 will produce more intensive east-west passenger and freight traffic.

Internal migration will probably be mostly from north to south, instead of east-west, and the number of temporary residents in southern regions and larger cities may grow significantly, as well as international couples.

External immigrations is far more uncertain; the number of immigrants could reach 5.5 million or many times more, 71 million in the Induced mobility scenario, generating most of the population growth, and largely increasing trips to/from outside Europe.

Depending on migration, a dramatic increase in the elderly dependence index is expected, from only 45% to 55% of people between 15-65 years, putting the financial viability of public pension benefit systems under considerable stress and then reducing the capacity of governments to maintain investments on economic infrastructures or R&D. Total public expenditure on social protection may change according to different scenarios, from around 20% to 35%. Ageing will also reduce the global saving rate in Europe and raise interest rates, especially if family structures become weaker and the number of elderly and people in general living alone grows.

 Structural reforms in the labour market and public social systems are expected, with the end of facilitating more flexible and customized working schedules and working places, consistent with a more service-oriented and technology-based economy. Productivity increases due to more advanced technology and more effective organizations, smaller and better-networked, could reduce the total number of equivalent full-workers from 95% to 80%. More flexible working environments and telecommunications will not make a net substitution of passenger travel, but will facilitate more flexibility in travel decisions and reduce peak-hour transit.

Technology will be a major driver in social and economic changes. It is expected that before 2050 the capacity of a 1,000€ PC will have more capacity to manage information than a human being will. Biotechnology and nanotechnology may result in much longer life spans for human beings, reinforcing the ageing trend and making safety increasingly important. People above 65 will likely be in good health and find more options to work on a more flexible and customized basis, as is needed to overcome the burden on public pension systems.

The decoupling of GDP and energy consumption will continue, and oil will be substituted by renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, with the energy produced by renewable sources reaching from 20% to 40% in 2050.  Nuclear energy will increase, in some scenarios reaching up to 50% of the total energy. The total energy consumed by road oil-based transport in MToe in the transport sector in 2050 may be very different, from 99 to 292 MToe. A decentralised Transeuropean electric grid will likely be developed, but the time it will require to be fully developed is uncertain. If successful, the number of connected energy producers may grow exponentially as well as the system’s overall productivity. The use of hydrogen as an energy repository will make the overall management of the system more efficient.

Technology will have a huge impact on transportation vehicles for all modes, as much cleaner, more intelligent and further customized vehicles are already emerging. The uncertainty is related not so much to the availability of a new generation of energy production technologies or transport vehicles in ten or twenty years, but rather how fast they will be commercialised. Public policies establishing the right regulations and incentives may be decisive in accelerating the process, or constraining it. In general, new vehicles and more intelligent, online traffic pricing and management will result in more productive transport infrastructure. This will certainly have important consequences on transport taxation, now largely dependant on oil consumption.

The amount of RTD in the GDP may grow between 5% and 10%, but most activities will internalise their own development and innovation investments, so this figure will actually be much higher.

As for GDP, small differences in growth rates may represent important differences over time. The European economy may grow between 2.6% and 1.3% over the 2005-2050 period, with increasingly stable evolutions, since it is already a mature economy. At the moment, the Commission's 2007-2060 estimates  point to 1.7% in the Baseline, 1.2% in the worst "no migration" case and 1.9% growth per annum in the best "productivity reforms" case ³, which could point in the latter case to even more than a doubling of economic output. The gap between regions is expected to be reduced.

The demand for personal travel will change according to the evolution of the economy, which is increasingly dematerialized and more service-oriented, from large industrial firms devoted mass production to a more flexible, productive and service-oriented network of small, medium and large companies. There is no empirical evidence that the long-term pattern of people devoting a given amount of time and available budget to travel will change. Daily commuting trips to work may remain stable, but less concentrated in peak hours, increasing trips for business and non-business activities, especially long-distance within Europe. Decoupling of passenger transport and economic growth measured by GDP will happen for traffic within Europe, but overall, because of traffic outside the EU, the long-term pattern of elasticity will remain.

For freight, the increase of imports and exports as well as longer multimodal logistic chains within Europe will compensate for the decrease in domestic freight due to deindustrialisation, and freight will keep growing as it has been. The transport system could have to accommodate between 2 and 4 times more trucks than now, depending on the capacity of railways to improve their efficiency. The number of passenger kilometres that roads and rails may have to accommodate may be twice as much or more, depending on the scenario. Growth in long-distance freight, due to increasing imports from overseas entering by the largest ports, will make railways and combined transport more efficient for this market.

In highly-congested corridors and urban areas transport policies may have a critical impact on improving transport productivity in the short term. Better supply and demand management strategies will be applied  using ICT innovation.

Different sets of policies can be applied to face all of these challenges. From a liberal, market-oriented approach, economic growth in the short term is indispensable (aiming at an overall 2.6% for the 2005-2050 period). If public institutions are capable of implementing a non-constraining and reliable regulatory framework as well as structural reforms, technology will facilitate decoupling traffic growth from environmental impacts when cost-effective. This optimistic scenario may fail, in the mid-term, if neither technology nor institutional reforms see the required evolution, if peak-oil occurs or oil becomes much more expensive to extract, resulting in a fast economic decline linked to social conflicts. Between these two scenarios and the scenario favouring an almost zero-growth economy or a very unlikely change in people’s behaviour, the moderate growth scenario is a reasonable alternative.