Debate: Greening transport package
Date: TUESDAY, 11 JULY 2023
Speaker: Jutta Urpilainen
Language: EN

To provide an overview of the package, we have a communication explaining the rationale behind it and how the proposals fit in with the bigger picture. It also highlights the people behind freight-transport services setting the scene for addressing worker shortages, improving their working environment and tackling an ageing workforce.  So let me now turn to the three legislative initiatives on the table today. CountEmissions EU: This proposal establishes a single methodology to calculate transport service emissions. It will be based on a global ISO standard recently adopted. Already today we see transport operators informing their customers of the impact of the Co2 emissions of their trips. However, we don’t know how this impact has been calculated, and this is what we tackle with this proposal, ensuring businesses and consumers get reliable and comparable data when being informed about their carbon footprint for passenger services, but also for freight. There is notably no obligation on economic operators to provide their carbon footprint. And we have paid particular attention not to burden the sector, in particular SMEs.  The second proposal and initiative is the Weights and Dimensions Directive. The shift to clean trucks in particular, zero-emission vehicles will take time. Naturally, we need additional incentives to make them more attractive and increase their uptake. Our proposal intends to do this by allowing an additional weight of four tonnes for zero-emission vehicles to accommodate the weight of batteries without losing loading capacity. This is critical for a sector where most hauliers are SMEs and make a very careful cost-benefit analysis of every euro spent on fleet renewable. We remain technologically neutral. Should the market opt for hydrogen based solutions, we propose technical adjustments to host tanks behind the cabin without losing load capacity. Moreover, we are finally putting an end to today’s patchwork of national rules and bilateral agreements for high capacity vehicles which were at odds with the single market. We are not pushing anyone to embrace longer and/or heavier trucks where this is not accepted today. We are simply ending the situation in which more efficient trucks currently allowed in two or more neighbouring Member States cannot cross the borders between these. Standard 44 tonne trucks currently allowed in national traffic in 12 Member States will also be able to travel cross borders between allowing Member States, for example, a truck will be able to travel from the Netherlands to France, while until now their journey needed to end in Belgium.  Finally, we make life easier for road operators and important industries such as renewables and tech companies, which today face a platform of national requirements and procedures when transporting, for example, a piece of a wind turbine across borders.  Our third initiative is rail capacity regulation. Rail is one of the cleanest ways to transport freight, but current rules on capacity allocation are ineffective and particularly unfavourable to cross-border and freight services. And unfortunately, this makes rail unattractive for many logistics companies. Better management of capacity will help address this. So more concretely, our proposal will incentivise infrastructure managers to act in a more flexible way for both long-term strategic planning and short-term capacity allocation. With optimised use of the network, we will be bringing additional capacity and creating space for additional services. Railway undertakings will be able to request capacity at any time based on market needs instead of having the file requests within rigid timelines. We are also discouraging some practices by which companies reserve capacity just in case and do not use it. Equally, infrastructure managers will have to plan works on the network well in advance and take measures to reduce their impact on operations.  Let me conclude, honourable Members. The European freight sector is at a turning point. With increasing demand, it must become less polluting and more resilient while continuing to thrive in tomorrow’s globalised economy.