Brussels, 26/04/2001 (Agence Europe) - The Member States and the Commission have not reached an agreement over the reduction of transit duties in Austria, the Ecopoints, during the meeting of the Ecopoints Committee, this Wednesday in Brussels. The talks will continue before the next meeting of the Committee, in June. For lack of an agreement at this level, the Commission will present a draft decision to the Council, which will have three months to vote.
Following the increase in road traffic in Austria in 2000, the Commission proposes to reduce in 2001 by 1.055427 million the number of Ecopoints available, or around 150.000 crossings. This reduction will apply to hauliers from six countries that have recorded the largest growth in transit traffic: Italy, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Finland. During the meeting of the Ecopoints Committee, these States challenged the validity of the Austrian statistics, which form the basis of the Commission proposal. Germany announced that it had initiated an independent statistical study.
Let us recall that an order from the European Court of Justice bans the Commission from staggers this new reduction in Ecopoints over several years, as had been done last year (see EUROPE of 26/27 February, p.11). The head of the International Road Transport Union (IRU), Hubert Linssen protested in a press release against this new "punitive reduction" that will weigh down on North South trade in Europe. The IRU had already estimated at EUR 28 billion the annual losses for hauliers following the order from the Court (see EUROPE of 28 February, p.16). In a report presented last December, the European Commission had suggested not to renew, after its expiry in 2003, the system of Ecopoints created in the framework of the Austrian EU accession protocol (see EUROPE of 22 December 2000).