UETR expresses appreciation to the Court of Justice of the European Union for broadly confirming the validity of the Mobility Package but stresses the importance of applying the Package in its entirety and the urgent need to clarify the legal framework

07 Oct UETR expresses appreciation to the Court of Justice of the European Union for broadly confirming the validity of the Mobility Package but stresses the importance of applying the Package in its entirety and the urgent need to clarify the legal framework

The Mobility Package, as it stands, represents a balance of fairness, safety and sustainability in the EU road transport sector.
The Package is essential for preventing unfair competition and the rise of “letterbox” companies, establishing offices in countries with lower tax rates or looser labor laws but operating mainly in higher-cost Member States, creating market distortions. The current regulations, including the provisions on the return of vehicles, ensure that companies adhere to the legal and social standards of their home countries.
UETR takes note of the Court of Justice of the European Union’s judgement on the annulment of the provision requiring vehicles to return every eight weeks to the operational centre of the transport undertaking.
UETR highlights that long-term economic, social and environmental sustainability requires fair competition and regulated driver conditions, which lead to competitive, better managed and more efficient transport systems.
UETR’s view is that any changes to the core elements of the Package would risk to undermine the progress made toward ensuring fair competition across operators and improving working conditions for drivers.
The removal of the vehicle return obligation could unravel the balance of social fairness, competition and road safety that the Package seeks to establish, being a set of norms as far as possible coherent and interlinked. Moreover, the removal would not tackle the root causes of inefficiencies in freight movement, such as improper/inefficient route planning, overloading or not taking advantage of multimodal transportation.
Every aspect of the Mobility Package is designed to work together, and only by applying it fully can its purpose be realized. At this juncture the focus should be on how best to implement the Package as a whole, improving sustainable transport practices within the current framework, to which transport companies already made efforts to adapt since the Package entered into force.
In any case, there is an urgent need to clarify how the judgement affects obligations to hauliers to allow them operate in compliance and efficiently, and plan for the future.