Women’s national teams are doing it better than their men’s counterparts when it comes to addressing the climate footprint of their trips during the UEFA European Football Championship.
The German, Portuguese, Belgian, French, Dutch and English teams [1] have confirmed they will be abiding by UEFA’s requirement of travelling by train or coach within Switzerland for the Eurocup 2025 [2]. Last year, UEFA also required men’s teams to travel by train or coach in Germany, but only the Swiss and German teams confirmed they would be doing so.
“Women’s teams are committing this year to none or very limited flying upon arrival in their base camps in Switzerland. This shows a huge progress from last year’s men’s Eurocup. Back then, it was not just that teams were barely committing to use ground transport, most didn’t even seem to have considered it”, says Aiza Rodrigues Akhtar, Corporate Travel Campaigner.
Transport amounts to around 80% of the Euro’s climate footprint. While these emissions mostly come from fans’ trips, national football teams have the chance to serve as examples for millions of supporters.
T&E’s Travel Smart campaign and a group of partner organisations acknowledge the progress women’s national teams are making ahead of the Eurocup 2025, but call on UEFA to seize upon this year’s momentum by going further and requiring teams to travel by train or coach to and within the host country when trips are below a certain distance or duration.
Four different scenarios developed by T&E show the impact such a policy would have. Asking all teams which can reach their destination in less than six hours by rail to take a train would reduce the tournament’s team transport emissions by 15%. Lifting that threshold to ten hours would make emissions drop by 32%. Setting a fourteen-hour limit would avoid 50% of the travel footprint. And if all teams but Iceland were asked not to fly, reductions would be of up to 84% [3].
Four teams (Belgium, France, Germany and Italy) can reach their destination in Switzerland in less than six hours. The French team could get to Saint Gallen in 5 hours and 6 minutes if it took two trains. The German team could also take a train from Frankfurt to Zürich which is 4 hours and 12 minutes. Last year, the Swiss team arrived in Germany on rail, showing cross-border trips for these tournaments are perfectly feasible.
“Having a strong travel policy asking teams to travel by coach or rail when the destination is below a certain distance or duration is not wishful thinking. The French team, for example, has already increased the travelling time below which it will not fly. Such a policy would reward those teams that are already taking decisive steps while sending a clear message to football supporters all over the world”, Aiza Rodrigues Akhtar adds.
[1] Following publication of this PR, the English team communicated it’d only use coaches upon arrival in Switzerland. This was announced via an article on July 1.
[2] The French team excludes one of the matches in the knock-out round if they qualify from its commitment to avoid flying, as the journey would take more than four hours. For this tournament, the team will make trips of up to 4 hours by coach, although under its current travel policy, established in 2023, ground transport is only mandatory for trips below 3 hours. The Dutch team commitment is limited to the first phase of the tournament.
[3] Calculations assume teams travel by train from the city in which they are based to their base camps in Switzerland. Longer trips could be split into more than one leg, and include stops along the way.