A Price Worth Paying – A guide to the new EU rules for road tolls for lorries

The objective of this paper is to provide guidance to interested people in EU Member States that are considering introducing or changing existing charging systems for lorries. It should help them to interpret the complex European rules on lorry charges within their own particular national context. The most recent version of these rules was agreed by the European Parliament in December 2005 and formally adopted by the transport ministers in March 2006. The new rules came into force upon publication of Directive 2006/38/EC in the official journal of the European Union on 9 June 2006.

This paper seeks to address two questions: ‘What must be done?’ and ‘What can be done?’ In other words, it hopes to provide clarity on the obligations and the remaining design choices faced by Member States in implementing their own national lorry charging systems.