Luxembourg, 07/04/2008 (Agence Europe) - Despite all the Slovenian Presidency's hard work, EU member states have illustrated their disagreements on the subject of cabotage in road freight transport. At a policy debate on Monday 7 April on the three items of draft legislation in the transport package to simplify and clarify rules on access to the profession and the road transport market (see EUROPE 9431), EU27 transport ministers brought up two key issues - cabotage and the introduction of national electronic registers of authorised transport companies in the member states.
Cabotage. Although a large number of delegations backed the compromise deal put forward by the Slovenian Presidency (3 consecutive operations in 7 days, as initially proposed by the European Commission, and a report forcing the Commission to unveil an assessment report of the transport market by 2012) due to their desire to compromise, other delegations raised the issue of 'return cabotage' (cabotage is the exclusive right of a country to operate transport of goods or passengers within its territory). These member states (Sweden, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Poland and Portugal) say that cabotage should be regulated in transit countries on the return journey to reduce the number of empty journeys to a minimum. Camiel Eurlings, Dutch transport minister, said during the debate that when a Dutch heavy goods vehicle is in Spain and does not have any return load, it has to travel 2,000 kilometres without a load. It should be possible to load up in a transit country like France, for example, he said. His Danish counterpart, Carina Christensen, backed this idea, pointing out that cabotage should be possible as long as it follows the shortest route.
Ireland, Slovakia and Bulgaria backed the Slovenian Presidency's compromise but called for greater liberalisation. More hesitant about freeing up the market, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom agreed to go along with the compromise. Austria says that increasing cabotage would have more disadvantages than advantages and opposes greater opening of the market. Belgium, Italy and Estonia put forward their own definition of cabotage based solely on the time criterion. Germany backed the European Commission's proposal but expressed reservations about the introduction of a national electronic register. Malta, Greece and Portugal also expressed doubts about the electronic registration plan, backed by France, Ireland, Bulgaria and other countries.
Member states will have to reach a compromise on other proposals in the package, like the transport manager and restricting the maximum number of companies under the transport manager's responsibility (2 according to the Slovenian Presidency deal, as opposed to 4 in the European Commission's proposal). The United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Malta and probably Finland (which has a huge number of small transport firms) will probably call for an increase in this upper limit. (A.BY)