Luxembourg, 21/11/2003 (Agence Europe) - The Court of Justice has rejected Austria's appeal in the Ecopoints affair. European judges decided that the principle adopted by Austria according to which a journey can be counted as transit on the basis of the adjustment of ecotags when lorries enter Austria, has no place in Community provisions.
In 1996 the Commission set up an electronic control system based on the "ecotag" system which was installed in vehicles and enabled an automatic counting of ecopoints, technical specifications were determined in a 1994 regulation. This system is carried out depending on the infrastructure provided by the Austrian authorities. In the case of vehicles making journeys known as "bilateral, ecotags have to be adjusted in a way that demonstrates that a journey other than the journey in transit is carried out before the vehicle reaches Austrian territory. Bilateral journeys are part of international transport in which journeys made by a vehicle whose departure is inside Austria and the destination is in another Member State and vice-versa, explained the Court press statement.