In the last quarter of 2022 the volumes of shipments of combined transport in Europe fell overall by -6.46% and this largely nullified the growth of volumes produced during the previous part of the year. It has announced the president of the International Union for Road-Rail Combined Transport (UIRR), Ralf-Charley Schultze, illustrating The latest survey of the trend of the transport market European combined carried out by the association. Schultze has specified that the disappointing performance of the fourth quarter of the last year is the product of a punctuality of the Rail services totally unacceptable, of costs of electricity for railway traction which are exponentially increased and a sharp slowdown in economic activities.

That the difficulties are only at the beginning is revealed by the barometer index established by the UIRR to assess sentiment of companies in the sector for the next 12 months, which is now Positioned on "negative" and reports an evaluation of future prospects that had not been so low for 2.5 years, since the index previously fell to "negative" in the second quarter of 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Schultze denounced that in recent months "only a few States of the European Union have availed themselves of the intervention on the electricity market made possible by emergency legislative action and even fewer have channelled its effects towards users of traction electricity. Without an effective regulatory intervention to limit price increases of electrical energy by traction at the level of variations in price of diesel - underlined the president of the UIRR - the modal shift and the gradual reduction of CO2 emissions produced by the combined transport of goods will come to a standstill. In addition, the sector urgently needs an improvement in the punctuality of services provided by service subcontractors railways and quality tracks by operators infrastructure'.

With regard to legislative measures, Schultze highlighted that the postponement by the European Commission from April to the end of June of the "Greening Transport Package", the measures to improve the environmental impact of road transport, and rail freight, 'further clouds the Perspectives. The late publication of the package - specified - risks delaying the approval of the legislative measure until the end of the year. In the sector - specified the president of the UIRR - many believe that the Greening Freight Package has a potential to boost modal shift through combined transport similar to that generated in 1992 by the adoption of the current Directive on combined transport'.