Despite several proposals from the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU, the Member States have failed to reach agreement on revising the directive on the weights and dimensions of road vehicles, according to a progress report published on Friday 7 June. Indeed, countries have expressed concerns about the safety risks of increasing the maximum weight and length of lorries.
Presented in July 2023 by the European Commission (see EUROPE 13220/21), this revision is part of the ‘package’ aimed at greening freight transport in order to encourage the use of electric and hydrogen vehicles and reduce the number of vehicles on the road.
During the Belgian Presidency, work focused on finding a solution to allow heavier vehicles on European roads, as a number of Member States are concerned that this would have a negative impact on their road infrastructure and compromise safety. The Presidency has proposed adding an infrastructure impact mitigation formula in the annex to ensure a sufficient distance between the different axles, as an additional condition for five and six-axle vehicles, while other Member States have also proposed adding additional axles to the vehicle. Overall, several Member States considered the proposed formula to be a possible solution to this problem. Also, a maximum weight of 46 tonnes for all vehicles, as in the current directive, has been welcomed by many Member States in this regard.
With regard to a solution allowing zero-emission vehicles to compensate for the additional weight of this technology, several Member States are opposed to allowing a load heavier than 11.5 tonnes on the driven axle, which would be required for some vehicle configurations. A compromise proposal to allow a 12-tonne load on the driven axle only for battery electric vehicles gained some support, but a majority of Member States insisted on a limitation to 11.5 tonnes. Some Member States also find it very difficult to allow for more than two additional tonnes for zero-emission vehicles.
The other main outstanding issue relates to Member States that allow the circulation of vehicle combinations heavier than 40 tonnes on their national networks, and how these heavier vehicles could be allowed to circulate in international traffic. The suggestion of allowing for specific technical or operational requirements looks promising, but requires more work. Further solutions have been sought by limiting the scope to ‘EURO VI’ standard vehicles and by granting additional weight to zero-emission technologies, in order to incentivise the uptake of zero-emission vehicles in international traffic.
At the Transport Council, to be held in Luxembourg on Tuesday 18 June, ministers are due to adopt their negotiating position (‘general approach’) on this text, but this does not yet seem possible. For its part, the European Parliament adopted its position in March (see EUROPE 13369/19).
Read the report: https://aeur.eu/f/clj (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)