A half-day event co-organised by Transport & Environment, the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) & Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL)
The British government is the latest EU member state to announce it is introducing a charge on lorries, but it will be a time-based ‘vignette’ system rather than a distance-based charge. A senior official from the European Commission described it as ‘old-fashioned and out of date’.
Opinion by Jos Dings - T&E Director
Did we miss something? Last year, the European Commission didn’t propose a single new legislative measure to clean up transport. To be fair, it has been spending most of its time worrying about the future of the Eurozone. As a result, for T&E this was the sort of year where seeds for smarter transport policy were sown. We’re optimistic that next year could bring a decent crop of positive changes.
Poland is set to join the club of EU member states that have introduced a distance-based charge for lorries. An electronic charge applicable to all vehicles above 3.5 tonnes (including buses) using national roads is due to come into effect on 1 July 2011, but the price per kilometre has not yet been agreed.
The EU’s ban on member states charging road hauliers for the unpaid costs of lorry journeys looks set to be partially lifted, after a compromise deal was agreed among member states that could lead to a new Eurovignette directive next year. But the cost of the Belgian presidency getting agreement appears to be the retention of important restrictions on how states can charge for the costs of congestion, plus an air pollution loophole for newer lorries that T&E has described as ‘bizarre’.
A political battle has broken out in Germany over whether trials planned for next year with oversized lorries – so-called ‘mega-trucks’ – should be allowed to take place.
Today, in Luxembourg, European Transport Ministers reached an agreement on revised road charging rules for lorries (the Eurovignette directive). Nina Renshaw, deputy director at Transport & Environment (T&E), welcomed the agreement but also stressed that a number of issues remain.
Letter to Ministers of Transport outlining T&E priorities on the Eurovignette directive before the 15-October Transport Council which is due to approve the new piece of legislation.
NGOs in Denmark are expressing concern at the expansion of a Danish trial of mega-trucks, the 60-tonne lorries currently banned under EU law.
A major international conference on the future of lorry charging to achieve a cleaner, smarter and more competitive Europe.