Debate: Barriers to the free movement of goods
Date: THURSDAY, 16 DECEMBER 2021
Speaker: Adina-Ioana Vălean
Language: EN

I think we are very much aligned, as we always were, on supporting the internal market and the free movement of goods. I’m saying that we are aligned and you need to recognise that, at the peak of the trouble with the shutting down of frontiers and long queues of trucks because of the COVID restrictions, the Commission acted quickly and convinced Member States to act with the guidelines. We managed to open the frontiers and we have something solid left after that.  The whole principle of green corridors is now embedded, at least in the Schengen area, as a principle with 15 minutes to cross a border for trucks with goods. We have digital documents to be presented at the frontier, and the digitalising of documents and goods, so that the time spent checking and verifying is diminished.  The last discussion I had with transport Ministers, again in anticipation of new restrictions because of Omicron, was to give priority to the transport workers for vaccination, so that we will make sure that they do not fall under possible restrictions imposed for health reasons in the Member States. It’s something which we are monitoring at all the frontiers – the passes and the corridors – through our satellite application, so we know the waiting times and it’s not such a tough situation as it used to be. But, of course, there are some traditional points in which waiting times are higher and these are at the border of Schengen – this, I totally recognise – but also, for example, at the border between Bulgaria and Romania, and not only Romania and Hungary.  At the time, we discussed various solutions to these queues. For example, I know projects which the Commission is ready to support, to develop smart parking before the frontier so that you don’t have a queue of trucks at the frontier with controls for entering the Schengen area, but have them some distance away with a smart indication on when they should go to get their pass. So all this use of new technologies and smart ideas would help ease an unfortunate situation, which is the Schengen frontier inside our internal market. This week, we have presented the new proposal on the revision of the TEN—T Regulation. It comes, for example for Ireland, with better designed roads towards Europe, which would be of the standard promoted by the European Commission and European Member States as part of our network. They were not very well developed previously because there was no need, but now we are thinking about how to better connect Ireland with the continent.  Many of you discussed Brenner. That’s the latest thing that we are working on at the moment. We are permanently working on Brenner. The most important thing here is that what is not acceptable is, as Mr Schwab said, is to transfer problems from one region to another on the corridor. Someone on a corridor cannot say that because they have issues with, for example, congestion or the quality of air, they cannot move the queue of trucks from their region to the neighbouring region. I say that because, whatever solution is found, it has to be agreed by everyone in order not to have bottlenecks along such an important corridor.  As I say, we are working on this again and are in permanent dialogue with the countries involved. We have relaunched it at government level. We have many very good ideas and solutions, which it is possible to be put in place with the support of the Commission as long as they are agreed. But how many ideas and projects will we have and how much willingness will we have to solve them? What we actually need is the political will of the parties involved to agree on a common solution. That being said, we are going to work hard to make sure that any restrictions put on the free flow of goods in the internal market are addressed immediately and we will find solutions for this. I think we are a long way from the beginning of the crisis, so Member States’ governments have understood what it would mean for their citizens if they started closing frontiers for one reason or another, and how this would affect people and their economies because of the supply chains.  Thank you very much for this debate. I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.