Urban areas globally, and especially the ones of the European environment, face a great amount of challenges today: the economic crisis, climate change, transport system relying on fossil fuels, and the health risks caused, directly or indirectly, by transport. Increasing transport demand produced by several factors burden the existing urban transport system with more demanding solutions. The existence of a need for increasing mobility to satisfy traffic demand, along with space, energy, environment and financial issues requires a new approach in resolving urban transport problems of the world. Therefore, a new transport policy vision requires redefining the existing urban transport strategy in a way that traditional strategic approach in transport planning shifts to the integrated traffic planning. The European Commission adopted transport strategy, “Action Plan on Urban Mobility “ in 2009. As a consequence, sustainable urban mobility plans (SUMP – Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan) have been implemented in several European cities. Croatia is at its beginnings in developing sustainable urban mobility plans. The paper will present the European planning documents related to urban mobility, the purpose and objective of planning and the development of sustainable urban mobility plans in the European cities.

transport policy; sustainable urban mobility plan; European Union; transport strategy; sustainable urban transport system