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Mobility Package – where will lead us?

There has been a lot of scuffle around the European Commission's one-year-long proposal introducing the "Mobility Package". It is a set of 3 initiatives with purpose to govern commercial road transport in the EU. The specific regulations are still under negotiation so little can be said for sure. If implemented, it will bring drastic changes to many crucial aspects of the industry's activities.

18 May 2018

The Mobility Package is still under construction

One of basic ideas of Mobility Package is not only to impose the minimum rates of remuneration for delegated workers but to treat them just as they were employed in given country. Including but not limited to obligatory pension/social funds to be paid by company to the foreign government. It is assumed that driver in international traffic will be subject to the provisions on the posting already after three days in the month of crossing the border. Regardless of whether the carriage is carried out in bilateral traffic or in cabotage. The EC proposal may also cover transit transport, but there is still no clear decision about it. EU bureaucrats consider 6 hours per working day. Some countries demand the provisions on posting to be in force from the first hour after crossing the border.

The package includes also prohibition of resting for more than 24 hours in the cabin by drivers and many other solutions. Brussels wants to conclude negotiations this year.  So that the new law will be adopted by the current European Parliament, whose term ends in mid-2019.

Protectionism under dictation

Regardless the officially claimed reasons, it seems that the real idea behind these regulations is to hinder access to the Common Market. They will introduce protectionism for the benefit of the selected groups of interests. However, it seems that those countries forgot about a couple of facts. The huge drivers shortage in whole Europe means that the carriers from “peripheral” countries are crucial to keep the cargo on the move. They are also subcontractors to most of logistics operators based in countries from the Road Transportation Alliance. “Mobility Package” will hit everybody, including the regular EU citizens who will have to pay more for products in stores.

The Association of International Road Carriers in Poland alerts that the proposed solutions leads to violation of Common Market rules and damage the fairness of the market competition in EU:

https://zmpd.zmpd.pl/aktualnosc.php?akt_id=6216

Also IRU presents very critical view on this matter:

https://www.iru.org/where-we-work/europe/europe-overview/european-commission-mobility-package

Today no one can say how the EU road transportation market will look after the “Mobility Package” implementation. But one thing is certain – everybody will pay for it.