Strategic paper on HGV road user charging

Another stage has been reached in the informal negotiations between the European Parliament, the 2465 European Commission and the Council to revise the Eurovignette Directive.

The Directive involves charging heavy goods vehicles for the use of certain infrastructures, and an informal compromise has to be endorsed by the European Parliament and Council.

However, the 1203 International Road Transport Union (IRU) claims that if it is given the go-ahead, “the non-mandatory earmarking of the revenues from the Eurovignette, aimed at greening road transport at-source, as decided by the European Parliament’s TREN Committee, will turn the Directive into a pure additional tax on the already heavily taxed road transport services.”

Meanwhile, 1103 ASECAP, the European Association of operators of tolled road infrastructures, has presented its Road Manifesto for an Efficient, Safe, Smart and Sustainable Transport, which underlines “the efficient use of toll revenues collected by the motorway concessionaires to provide a high-quality road transport service at an affordable cost.”

At its 39th ASECAP Study and Information Days in Brussels, Belgium, where about 250 road transport experts gathered, the strategic paper was presented in the European Parliament and submitted to Saïd El Khadraoui, Member of the European Parliament and rapporteur on the revision of the Eurovignette Directive, and to Carlo Des Dorides, executive director of the European GNSS Agency.

“It is a strong signal from the tolled motorway operators to the European institutions, fully in line with the ambitions of the European Commission’s White Paper (Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area – Towards a competitive and Resource Efficient Transport System),” says ASECAP.

“The European tolled motorway operators demonstrate their full support for long-term infrastructure financing planning based on the user-payer and
polluter-payer principles. They reassert their strong commitment to reinvest tolling revenues in the motorway network.”

Klaus Schierhackl, chief financial officer at 4178 Asfinag, the Austrian motorway and expressway network operator, has been appointed as the new president of ASECAP, and will take the lead of the association for two years.