This seems like making headlines for little real impact.
If they did want to do something for the environment and fairer competition between transport modes they should tax aviation fuel and airline tickets. Regardless of distance and destination.
Aviation emissions are 1.9% of global emissions. [0] I certainly don't disagree with a jet fuel tax (which is obscenely tax free in most of the world).
However, if we want to be impactful then we need to start building massive storage infrastructure and grow renewable sources so that we can curb down emissions from energy production using coal and gas.
Everything else is a drop in a bucket comparatively speaking (even ICE to EV transition is relatively small in comparison with Electricity related emissions). More so if EVs are charged up from Coal/Gas Electricity sources.
This is one of the problems with hiring non-technical politicians. They have zero background in science and base everything on current trends and analogies. It is a real problem in many western democracies - people who are only capable of getting a political science degree run for office because that is the only job they can get. Capable people end up doing other jobs because politics doesn't pay until you are in a position to corrupt things and capable people usually aren't interested in corruption. Politics needs to pay far more in order to attract capable/competent people.
100%, most for the climate rules in the Eu are just for show.
they pick the most miniscule and most visible / inconveniencing regulations so that they look like they care about the environment, while actually doing nothing.
You could basically say that about any climate initiative. Cheap carbon-based fuels form the entire foundation of our society. Changing that is going to be a long, hard fight. You have to start somewhere.
As a personal anecdote. My family decided to drive instead of fly over Thanksgiving. We saved about 1200 kg of CO2 even though we had to drive 12 hours. Clearly some savings can be made by forcing alternate means of transportation.
If they did want to do something for the environment and fairer competition between transport modes they should tax aviation fuel and airline tickets. Regardless of distance and destination.