Road Haulage

General rules

Council Regulation (EEC) 881/92 of 26 March 1992

If a road transport operator wants to carry out an operation between to Member States he has to get a community license, which gives him free access to the whole single market. This license is issued by the Member State establishment to every haulier who is established in a Member State in accordance with the Member States legislation. The community license is issued to the hauliers name. The haulier is not allowed to give the license to any third party. A certified copy of the community license shall be kept in the vehicle. The operator must demonstrate the copy whenever it is required by an authorized inspecting officer. The licnese shall be issued for a time period of five years and is renewable.

Further information:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31992R0881:EN:HTML

Cabotage

The national or domestic transport is still a national task. But liberalisation has been initiated by Council Regulation (EEC) No 3118/93 of 25 October 1993.

This regulation allows a Member State haulier who has a community license to transport goods between two points within another Member State on a temporary basis. The aim is to allow non- resident hauliers the provision of transport services within a national market. The difference between national transport or cabotage is important in this discussion and is simultaneous the reason for the limitation in terms of temporality.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31993R3118:EN:HTML

Interpretative Communication
It is not easy to demonstrate when an activity becomes permanent or is of temporary nature. The Court of Justice of the European Union has not tried to define the temporary nature of transport services. Instead of they define criteria on the temporary character of transport ser-vices.
The Commission has based its interpretative communication to clarify the term “temporary basis” on this definition by the Court. Economic developments and legal analysis relating to road cabotage operations show that the interpretation of the temporary character of these operations is necessary, especially regarding to the avoiding of the proliferation of Member State practices and rules. The commission like to propose following interpretation:
The criteria which are used for assessing if there is a cabotage operation on temporary basis must comply with the definition adopted by the Court of Justice: duration, frequency, continu-ity and periodicity of service provision. In all cases, each specific event must be investigated individually regarding to these considerations. Following activities by a haulier which is not established in the host State on the territory of that state are not line with the regulation (EC) 3118/93. That means that these activities come not under the term of temporarily.
-    any activities that are permanent, carried out continually and regularly,
-    activities that are not just on an ad-hoc basis peculiar are carried out systematically,
-    any activities that involve an vehicle belonging to a non-resident haulier, where the vehicle in question never leaves the territory of the host State.
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/oj/2005/c_021/c_02120050126en00020007.pdf

The following table shows the current situation of Community hauliers in other Member States: http://ec.europa.eu/transport/road/policy/access_market/doc/2006_05_01_overview_cabotage.pdf

Study on Road Cabotage in the freight transport market

The Commission wants to acquire a more comprehensive understanding of the market for road cabotage services in the 15 Member States and Slovenia. Furthermore gives this report a comprehensive and comparative overview of the market for road carbotage services including the regulatory regime and its enforcement.

In this study the common problems are identified by comparing road cabotage in the various Member States. Recommendations on how the engaged stakeholders can overcome these problems are given at the end of this study.

The main findings of this study are:

-          Despite the road cabotage can denote an 100% increase since its liberalization in 1998, it still only accounts for about 1% of total transport in the European Union. In Some Member States the road cabotage takes a bigger share of the national market. In France and Belgium for example it is about 3%.

-          Road cabotage has for hauliers from certain Member States more importance to their business than for other hauliers. In Luxemburg for example the cabotage represents almost 25% of the total transport performance.

-          The governance of road cabotage by a Council regulation and the interpretative communication of the Commission is not adequate from the point of view of several Member States and road transport associations. They have expressed the need for a clearer and detailed definition of this activity. In their opinion the current rules leave too much room for interpretation and are difficult to enforce.

http://ec.europa.eu/transport/road/studies/doc/2006_03_road_cabotage_study_en.pdf