EU transport commissioner Violeta Bulc has announced plans to introduce a distance based charging scheme across the EU. This would replace the various schemes and tolls applicable in member states. In France and Italy, highways have tolls (péage), while others have time-based charges (vignettes) for cars and lorries. Germany, Poland and Austria have kilometre-based charges for lorries but not for cars and other passenger vehicles. The idea is to make cross EU transport more efficient and less costly resulting in cheaper European road transport overall.
All EU countries are facing mounting costs for road improvement and a EU wide scheme would make delivery to Europe from the UK far easier and hopefully cheaper. Great news for exporters, importers and transport companies.
Transport & Environment senior official William Todts commented: ‘EU governments are all faced with similar problems: falling fuel tax revenues, heavy congestion, and stubbornly high transport emissions. Smart, distance-based tolls are the way to tackle these problems head-on, and Europe can play a very useful role in making sure that systems across the continent work together as well as possible. So we’ll need some common rules for those countries that want to introduce kilometre-based tolls.’