On Monday 18 January, the EU Council working group on land transport will discuss the ‘four-column document’ compiling the positions of the European Parliament and the EU Council on the revision of the Eurovignette Directive on the charging of heavy goods vehicles for the use of certain infrastructures.
“Delegations will be invited to share their preliminary view”, says the document. This, in view of a first and brief interinstitutional meeting (trilogue) scheduled for 29 January, according to information obtained by EUROPE.
The upcoming negotiations on this dossier are expected to be intense: indeed, the negotiating mandate adopted last month by Member States (see EUROPE 12626/7) now differs considerably from the position voted in May 2018 by MEPs (see EUROPE 12026/12).
The first major difference between the two texts is that the EU Council has abandoned the idea of discontinuing time-based user fees (vignettes).
Emissions as a benchmark
Thus, the Parliament, remaining faithful to this draft, requires that Member States no longer introduce user charges for heavy commercial vehicles and vans used for the transport of goods and that these user charges be replaced by infrastructure charges as of 1 January 2023.
The Council of the EU, in its recitals, considers that States should be allowed to maintain this time-based charging system and to introduce new ones, so that all Member States can benefit from it and “user acceptance of future road-pricing systems” is guaranteed.
Although it therefore proposes to remove the article ending the vignette system from the Commission’s proposal, the EU Council is introducing a provision which would oblige Member States to modulate charges according to the CO2 emissions of heavy goods vehicles. It believes that this provision will have more effect than the implementation of distance-based pricing throughout Europe.
This modulation would work in such a way that vehicles, classified according to their emissions at the time of their first registration, would benefit from reductions ranging from -5% to -75% compared to the applicable charge, depending on their class.
Despite the introduction of such a provision, the States would not be prevented from keeping the modulation linked to the EURO standard in parallel. Finally, there is nothing mandatory for private cars.
Fees for external costs
Secondly, the two co-legislators plan to make mandatory charges for external costs—applied to compensate for air pollution or traffic-induced noise pollution.
Parliament wanted the sections covered by an infrastructure charge to be subject to external cost charges from the beginning of 2021, and that these charges should apply to all types of vehicles—with a possible waiver for vehicles of historic interest—from 2026 onwards.
The EU Council, for its part, would like to impose an air or noise pollution charge on heavy vehicles on at least part of the network affected by tolls, where the pollution from these heavy vehicles is most significant. This all comes 4 years after the entry into force of the text.
It also suggests that a charge for external costs, aimed at recovering the costs of CO2 emissions, could also be introduced by States.
In addition, both institutions are considering the introduction of surcharges—applied to particularly congested or severely damaged sections—of up to 50%, while the Commission is not seeking higher than 25%. The co-legislators will, however, have to agree on their conditions in this area, which currently differ.
Furthermore, compromises will have to be found on the conditions for applying exemptions and reduced rates, one of which, introduced by the Council of the EU, has caused disappointment within the Member States themselves (see EUROPE 12618/12).
See the four-column table: https://bit.ly/2XITe66 (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)