Mobility Package: When Will the National Rules Disappear?

On the last day of May, the European Commission adopted a long-awaited mobility package which deals with road tolls, CO2 emissions reduction, reduction of congestion, better safety and posting of workers and rest times. The good news is that it sets up standard rules for road transport across Europe. The bad news is that national measures still persist under the framework of German MiLoG or French Loi Macron.

On 3rd May, France adopted a decree which obliges foreign hauliers posting their drivers in France to pay 40 euros to the French budget as compensation for costs incurred from running the digital system of declarations regarding the posting. Czech businesses call on the Commission to take quick and efficient action on national measures which create much red tape and go against the rules of the Internal Market. The mobility package allows for an exemption from posting rules if the period of posting to the territory where the carriage operations are performed is shorter than or equal to 3 days during a period of one calendar month. Due to the high mobility character of the transport sector, 3-day exemption is very low and will not ease the lives of hauliers who will have to comply after the 4th day (3 in total) of posting with different national rules. According to the proposal of the revised directive on posting, this means they will have to calculate the correct remuneration and comply with different national measures introduced by the Member States.

The proposal on specific rules for posting (part of the mobility package) enumerates the obligations for the road transport operators that can be introduced by Member States. We would like to believe in the good faith of Member States, but our experience leads us to think that a new administrative burden will again be put on transport operators.