Transportation depends on the mining industry, as it provides transport and traction stock, fuels and energy, human labour, machinery, equipment and materials used to build transport infrastructure. Taking into account that transport in the European Union is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, limiting their consumption will entail reducing the mobility of road transport, which consumes the most energy. Therefore, the priority of actions of the Member States of the EU is to transfer the burden of transportation from roads to multi-branch transport. It is dictated by the constant increase in the greenhouse effect, which is a consequence of the emission of toxic gases formed in the combustion of fossil fuels. In addition to the degradation of the environment, the negative effect of excessive use of road transport are its external costs, i.e. social costs, which are not directly born by transport companies, but by the entire society. These costs are directly related to the negative impact of transport activities on the environment and human life. The costs of environmental degradation, traffic accidents, traffic congestion, noise, human health, the infrastructure of the area and lost production as a result of human death have the largest share in the external costs of transport.
The main objective of the study is to present the competitiveness of intermodal transport in relation to road transport in the process of generating external transport costs resulting from the European Union's transport policy.