Brussels, 05/12/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission is preparing a legislative package on road tolls for next June. This is aimed partly at tackling the deficit in public infrastructure funding in all modes of transport. Although the first results from the public consultation in this area have been published, the European Commissioner for transport, Siim Kallas, has already provided a number of indications regarding European action priorities regarding road tolls, at a European Commission organised conference on the subject on Wednesday 5 December.
Kallas suggests that lorries could be subject to a standard tax according to the distance travelled, the damages caused to roads and possibly the external costs generated. National electronic tolls will have to be interoperable, with a single on-board apparatus facilitating payment throughout the EU. Proportionality and non-discrimination should be applied to cars. Drivers will have a minimum set of rights, namely, no discrimination will be based on nationality or residence, and information about the application of taxes and how they are used will be provided. This latter point is important because if road tolls are managed by public-private partnerships, the amount collected is reinvested in infrastructure, which is not necessarily the case if the state is responsible for toll collections. In this case, Kallas expressed a clear preference for a reinjection of some of some of the revenues collected, into transport, not exclusively road transport, throughout the Trans-European Transport Network. Toll price variety will be promoted during rush hour, as a means of tackling congestion because, says Kallas, more money is lost by cars and goods locked in traffic jams every year than the total European budget!
The Commissioner therefore envisages more benefits in road tolls, including funding for infrastructure maintenance, tackling road congestion and encouraging more sustainable mobility. Nonetheless, in Europe there are many different kinds of systems coexisting (timebased vignettes, barriers that calculate distance, electronic and satellite tolls), and this creates a distorted European market, which the next legislative package will have to rectify. (MD/transl.fl)