Brussels, 06/09/2013 (Agence Europe) - The Parliamentary transport committee (TRAN) has acknowledged, not without a certain degree of bitterness, the report commissioned by the policy department on mega trucks. The study proved incapable of putting forward any clear conclusions and suffered a barrage of criticism. This development is unlikely to help consolidate the transport committee, which is sharply divided on the question of the cross-border use of increasingly longer and heavier lorries, which could be allowed under the terms of the directive review on the weights and dimensions put forward by the Commission.
The study by Steer Davies Gleave is based on eight other studies previously carried out in Europe in a number of countries and ultimately provides a number of divergent conclusions. It says that the use of mega trucks should not have a too significant impact on freight modal shift (this particularly focuses on railway transport) or accidents but could significantly help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The study also calls for other more far-reaching studies to be carried out, given the too disparate data that exist at this point in time.
The rapporteur on the directive review in question, Jorg Leichtfried (S&D, Austria), said that the publication was not neutral in the slightest and attacked it for being a “very poor study carried out on behalf of the mega truck lobby. I don't see why European taxpayers should have to pay for that”. This point of view was also expressed by a handful of other members at the TRAN Committee.
The committee remains divided over mega trucks. Although Dieter-Lebrecht Koch MEP (EPP, Germany) is still a supporter of a more technological version of these vehicles, others, like Saïd El Khadraoui (S&D, Belgium) and Dominique Riquet (EPP, France), are concerned about their impact on infrastructure, external costs and road safety. Riquet, however, did not question the economic benefits that they could bring.
The chairman of the committee, Brian Simpson (S&D, United Kingdom) and the respective spokesmen for the EPP, Mathieu Grosch (Belgium) and Greens, Michael Kramer (Germany) regret the counter-productive effect that these lorries could have on railway transport development. (MD/transl.fl)