The COVID-19 pandemic will have affected the process of adopting the 'mobility package I'. The Council's final and formal position on the three texts making up this package - (1) posting of truck drivers; (2) rest and driving times, tachographs; (3) cabotage and market access - could not be adopted, as initially planned, at the General Affairs Council on 24 March.
As the health crisis has forced the EU to adapt its decision-making process, on the one hand, and Parliament to postpone its plenary sessions, on the other, it was agreed that the Council's formal position and its notification to Parliament would be adopted by written procedure once parliamentary work has resumed as normal.
Marian Marinescu (EPP, Romania) said on Tuesday 24 March on his Twitter account that he had asked Transport Commissioner Adina Vălean to halt the procedure for adopting the package.
To which Ismail Ertug (S&D, Germany) replied that the crisis should, on the contrary, push legislators to "accelerate the process, rather than to stop it".
"The current procedure is that in May and June there will be votes in Parliament on this text. Imagine if lorry drivers then hit the road and find out that Parliament has adopted measures that serve them. I don't want to be associated with this," Mr Marinescu told EUROPE when asked about his tweet.
The MEP assures us that he is not advocating that the proceedings be permanently interrupted, but that they should not resume until the crisis is over. "Then we can reassess the situation", he says.
"If the current particular circumstances oblige us to pause the adoption of our position at second reading, the questions relating to the social and market aspects of the first mobility package I must be settled as soon as possible", the chairwoman of the European Parliament's Transport Committee (TRAN), Karima Delli (Greens/EFA, France), told EUROPE.
"We don't have a definite deadline today, but our meeting will decide at the latest shortly after the situation returns to normal", she added.
The members of the committee (TRAN) had approved, last January (see EUROPE 12408/20), the agreement reached in the interinstitutional negotiations ('trilogues') on the social and market aspects of the 'mobility package I' (see EUROPE 12389/7). (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)