The European Commission is preparing a legislation for road transport pricing in the EU chargingtrucks for air pollution and noise to reduce environmental damage. This may shift some cargo from
roads to railways as it will impact the operational costs of road express operators in Europe.The EU Commission put forward a package of new “Greening Transport” initiatives to steertransport towards sustainability and to ensure that the prices of transport better reflect theirreal cost to society. The draft law would allow environmental costs to be included in truck tollsand thus amend current EU legislation that limits environmental surcharges to mountain regions suchas the Alps, according to the news agency Bloomberg.
In addition, the European Commission prepared a proposal for the Member States to helpimplement the initiative through more efficient and greener road tolls for lorries with the revenueto be used for reducing environmental impacts from transport and congestion.
Antonio Tajani, Vice-President of the European Commission, responsible for transport, said“This package is about tackling pollution and climate change, and making sure the polluter and notthe taxpayer pays for environmental damage. Among the results will be greener transport, feweremissions, up to 8% less fuel consumption by lorries and fewer hold-ups for all road users. Delays,unnecessary emissions and soaring costs are bad for transport companies, for their clients and forall of us. A more efficient and sustainable transport system will in the long run be a moreuser-friendly and cheaper transport system.”
The Strategy on the internalisation of external costs sets out how this can happen in allmodes of transport. Building on existing EU measures and proposals, such as those on fuel taxationincluding aviation in the EU’s Emissions Trading System, the Strategy considers all external costsincluding climate change, local pollution, noise and congestion. It is accompanied by a commonframework for estimating external costs in the EU.
The key part of this Strategy is the Proposal to revise the “Eurovignette” Directive on thecharging of heavy goods vehicles for infrastructure use. It seeks to establish a framework for theEU to calculate and vary tolls according to the air and noise pollution from traffic emissions andpeak-hour congestion levels. This will encourage freight transport operators to buy cleanervehicles and improve their logistics and route planning, European Commission stated.
The draft rules need the support of EU governments and the European Parliament. TheCommission said it hopes the new measures can take effect before 2011.
The EU is tackling road congestion in a bid to reduce harmful emissions and costly delays.Road transport is responsible for 75% of nitrous-oxide discharges from transport, and the cost oftraffic jams makes up about 1.1% of the EU economy. Trucks create about a quarter of these effects,the Commission added.
