The CER exhorts to modify the Eurovignette directive in order to assure a loyal competition between road and railroad



The association of railway societies European CER has expressed disappointment for the adopted preliminary decision last week from the European Council on the review of the directive on the taxation at the expense of the heavy motor vehicles used after the transport goods for the use of some infrastructures (Eurovignette), decision - it has specified the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies - that would allow to maintain the system of rate making based on the time of distance. This - it has denounced the CER - would go to damage of the efforts of Europe to decarbonize the transports with the passage to modality to lowlands carbon emissions as the rail shipment. Moreover - it has emphasized the association - this would go also against the principle "who uses wage" that she demands I at least debit it of the marginal costs, so - she has remembered the CER - as evidenced also from the European Parliament, and that she implies a rate making based from the covered distance.

The CER has rimarcato that the European legislation imposes to the railroads to pay rates based on the distance covered for uses it of railway infrastructures and has specified that therefore in order to respect the same principle would have to be taxes rates based on the distance on all the main street arteries, and this - has found the association - not only on 25% of these roads as happens currently.

The railway association has remembered that the proposal of review of the Eurovignette directive of May 2017 of the EU commission recognized this necessity proposing a gradual elimination of the street rate making based on the time for vehicles heavy to put into effect itself within 2023 and that in October the 2018 European Parliament, in first reading, had analogous proposed a gradual elimination within 2022, elimination - has observed the CER - that would contribute to a loyal competition between road haulage and rail shipment. Instead - it has explained the association - the last version of the text of the directive of the Council, that which general approach would have to be approved of next 2 December from the States of the EU, previews to completely remove the expirations for the gradual elimination of the street rate making based on the time, also for vehicles heavy, to only limit "a part of the net", in which the generated environmental damage it is "most meaningful", the obligation of debits for the external costs at the expense of truck and bus, let alone to exclude for others eight years from this additional taxation the heavy vehicles of inferior mass to 12 tons. "A similar approach - it has denounced the CER - contrasts with the ambition to decarbonize the transports delineated in the political agenda of the EU".

CER therefore has exhorted the ministers of the Transports of the EU to align itself at least to the position of the European Parliament or to that of the proposal of the EU commission.