The European Court of Auditors, as they say, "has already gone heavy" by judging the goodness of the EU's policies on intermodal transport, while specifying that the obstacles to the development of intermodality are not only attributable to the other institutions of the European Union, but also to the Member States. The Court, whose role is the independent reviewer of the European Union, nevertheless believes that the European Commission does not have a strategy dedicated to intermodality, making this instead part of broader strategies to make more ecological freight transport and modal transfer. Intermodality for which, in addition, there are no values-objective, and where values are set-objective to increase the share of sustainable modes of transport these "are nevertheless unrealistic," as the starting assumptions are not based on solid simulations of the extent to which the modal transfer can be realistically achieved considering the current long-term infrastructure constraints for rail and the routes inland waterways and the regulatory hurdles affecting the competitiveness of intermodal transport ".

These are some of the critical conclusions of the report by the European Court of Auditors on the intermodal transport of goods, for which EU funding for projects in support of the sector for the period 2014-2020 amount to about 1.1 billion euros.

The report notes that in the transport of goods in the EU the trucks still make it as a master, with the percentage of truckloads being transported by road (about 77%) that it continues to increase, and that some European standards that promote other modes of transport are outdated or counterproductive. In addition, the document highlights that the European network of infrastructure is not yet suitable for intermodal transport and that, despite efforts to reduce road freight, regulatory and infrastructural obstacles that penalize other modes of transport remain.

Relative to the values-objective, which have not been set for intermodality by being this frame within broader strategies for the greening of freight transport that define specific values-specific objective regarding the increase of the appeal to the railway and inland waterways, the European Court of Auditors has recalled that, for more, these are non-binding values and EU countries are free to set their own, which are not necessarily comparable and aligned with the objectives of the EU. It is therefore not possible to assess whether joint national efforts are sufficient to achieve the overall objectives of the EU on modal transfer. However, according to the court, "the target values set by the EU for 2030 and 2050 (ultimately, double the rail traffic and increase the use of the internal waterways by 50%) are simply unrealistic."

In the judgment of the Court, then, some EU rules nudge the attractiveness of intermodal transport, being the current version of the obsolete combined transport directive (it dates back to 1992) and ineffective. For example-he recalled the EU institution-it provides for the obligation of a paper document stamped by the railway or port authorities for all the route, instead of a digitized workflow and various attempts to revise the Directive by the European Commission did not find the favourable opinion of the Member States. At the same time, other regulatory provisions, in particular those governing road transport, sometimes contravarise the objective of incentivise intermodality.

For the Court, it is likely that capacity management and interoperability will remain problematic in the absence of new legislative actions (concerning, for example, the planning of the hourly slots for rail freight or the rules of priority for passenger trains compared to freight, or language requirements for train drivers).

The European Court of Auditors has also reported delays accumulated by EU countries in making infrastructure compliant with the technical requirements set out in EU law. For example-he noted-in the effort to compete with road transport, using longer trains that reach the European standard length of 740 metres could be one of the most cost-effective improvements. The problem is that, however, these trains can in theory be used only on the middle of the central corridors of the TEN-T Trans-European Transport Network. In addition, the lack of information on the capabilities of the network and intermodal terminals prevents shippers and logistics operators from offering good intermodal transport solutions to their customers.

Noting that the proposed revision of the TEN-T Regulation can improve the situation, the Court has lapidally clarified that however, as it is, the EU's freight network is not simply still suited to intermodality.

"The decarbonisation of transport is at the heart of the EU's objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as set out in the European Green Deal," said Annemie Turtelboom, a member of the Audit Court in charge of the audit, which is responsible for the EU's budget. Although intermodality is a fundamental instrument in such an effort, the freight sector is not on the right track. "