On Thursday 21 December, the Court of Justice of the European Union dismissed the action brought by the European Commission against Denmark concerning the maximum parking time at motorway service stations (case C-167/22).
The Commission initiated infringement proceedings against Copenhagen after the country introduced a rule in 2018 limiting the maximum parking time at public rest areas along its national motorway network to 25 hours.
According to the Commission, this rule constitutes a “restriction on the freedom to provide transport services since it does not affect Danish road hauliers and non-resident road hauliers in the same way”.
The Danish government told the Commission that carriers also had other parking options, but this argument was not enough to convince the Commission, which lodged an appeal for failure to fulfil obligations.
In its ruling, the CJEU dismissed the Commission’s appeal. While it conceded that “the 25-hour rule is capable of having a specific effect on the exercise, by non-resident hauliers, of the transport rights, in particular cabotage rights, with which they are entrusted” and that non-resident hauliers - having no operating centre to which they can go on Danish territory - are more likely to be affected by such a rule, it considers above all that the Commission has not provided “any objective data making it possible to establish that alternative parking capacities” are “insufficient”.
“Without such objective data, it cannot be established, except on the basis of presumptions, that the 25-hour rule is actually such as to impede cabotage transport activities carried out by service providers established in other Member States”, the Court concluded.
See the judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/a8e (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)