Europe cannot win the fight against climate change unless it ends its love affair with cars and planes, a top European Union agency warned on Monday.

The European Environment Agency said that the EU would have hit its Kyoto protocol target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 8 per cent between 1990 and 2012 years ago had it not been for the fast increase from transport. All other sectors of the economy from agriculture to power generation cut emissions between 1990 and 2005, its report said, while transport grew 26 per cent.

“Transport has been a free-rider for too long when it comes to the fight against global warming and carbon emissions,” said Jacqueline McGlade, chief executive of the agency. “Governments and citizens need to rethink radically their approach to transport policy – if nothing else, out of self-concern in protecting their health.”

She said investment was still skewed towards roads, which receive more than half the total, and airports rather than and rail and sea. Growth in transport emissions closely mirrored economic growth. Car ownership doubled in Lithuania between 1995 and 2005, for example, as it got richer.

With environment ministers meeting in Brussels to discuss how to cut emissions 20 per cent by 2020, the agency said transport, which accounts for a fifth of the total, was key. Its emissions are set to grow 15 per cent between 2010 and 2020 but would need to be capped to hit the target, it added.

Ministers on Monday clashed over how to meet a target for new vehicle engines to emit an average of 130 grammes of CO2 per kilometre by 2012. However, Peder Jensen, the report’s author, said: “That is just talking about how to share the pain. To hit the other targets we would need an average of 118g/km.”

The European Investment Bank, the lending arm of the EU, said last week it would prioritise rail and waterways over roads.