Members of the European Parliament’s Transport Committee (TRAN) have raised concerns with Commissioner for Transport Adina Vălean about delays in certain cases. With the European elections scheduled for the spring of 2024, they fear that some issues will not be finalised in time.
Ms Vălean presented the Commission’s roadmap. Following the presentation of the road safety package (see EUROPE 13163/8) in March, the Commission is currently finalising and will present its Greening Freight Package (see EUROPE 13152/2) in June. It will include improving the management and location of infrastructure capacity and revising the directive on the weight and dimensions of containers to make it suitable for electric vehicles. It will include the revision of the Combined Transport Directive, a proposal on CO2 metering and a revision of the Train Drivers Directive to make the profession more attractive to the younger generation.
The Commission’s Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE) is currently working on a revision of the whole roadworthiness package (see EUROPE 12987/30). It is currently assessing the impact of the current directive, in particular on the number of fine particles in the air and particle measurement. The Commission wants to use digitalisation to make progress in this area.
Finally, DG MOVE is currently working on the Multimodal Digital Mobility Services initiative (see EUROPE 12806/30), which aims to make it easier for consumers and businesses to compare mobility offers and make more sustainable mobility choices.
The Commissioner announced that the latter two measures will be presented after the summer, probably in September, for digital multimodal mobility services. An announcement that worried parliamentarians, given the electoral calendar.
“In the third quarter, it will be too late to have an agreement in April, it is useless”, criticised Marian-Jean Marinescu (EPP, Romanian). “Please make your best efforts to come forward with your proposal” he asked.
Ciarán Cuffe (Greens/EFA, Irish) was similarly critical: “A number of proposals have been postponed, not by months but years”. “For multimodal mobility, after the summer, it may be too late to make sufficient progress on this issue within this mandate” he said.
Dominique Riquet (Renew Europe, French) suggested that the road safety and roadworthiness package should be brought together to speed up the process. “DG MOVE is trying to finalise as quickly as possible” was the assurance from Vălean, in an effort to answer the criticism. (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)