The European Commission proposal on the Greening Transport Package
T&E background briefing on the Commission Proposal to revise the Eurovignette Directive.
A key element of the European Commission’s ‘greening transport’ package is a proposal to amend the ‘Eurovignette Directive’1, that establishes a set of rules Member States need to comply with when applying road charges for heavy goods vehicles on trans-european transport network (TEN-T) motorways.
It is important to note that neither the current nor proposed revision to the Eurovignette directive force any Member State to introduce road charging schemes, they merely set rules for those that choose to do so.
The main objective of this revision is to remove the current prohibition of ‘external cost charging’. Under current rules, Member States are explicitly prohibited from charging road users in the freight sector for the ‘external’ costs of their operations (such as environment, noise, congestion and health costs) on TEN-T roads. The existing rules, in that sense, directly contradict the ‘polluter pays’ principle, a critical pillar of EU environmental policy as laid down in the European Treaty.
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