Ensuring Basic Road Freight Connectivity after Brexit
After trilogue negotiations, the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council reached today a provisional agreement on ensuring Basic Road Freight Connectivity in case of a UK withdrawal from the EU with a no-deal Brexit, as part of the Contingency Action Plan presented by the EC. More than 80% of road haulage transport between the United Kingdom and the EU-27 is currently carried out by carriers established in the EU-27. In order to avoid serious disruptions and any risk of disturbing public order, temporary emergency measures enabling road haulage operators licensed in the United Kingdom to carry goods by road between the territory of the latter and the remaining 27 Member States are needed until the end of 2019.
During trilogue negotiations it was agreed to include cabotage for passenger and freight operations in order to facilitate the transport of passengers and merchandise –without any disruptions for daily routines. However, the scheme for such cabotage operations would be as follows, from the application of Brexit: two operations for four months; one operation for three months and zero operations during the last two months as from the date of application in order to complete the phase out by 31 December 2019, when the general contingency plan ends. Regardless of the date for the Brexit, the cabotage operations will stop by the end of the year.
MEP Izaskun Bilbao Barandica, ALDE shadow rapporteur in this file said:
“After hard negotiations we reached an agreement on this file linked to a very controversial point on cabotage. It is a pity that we succeeded in this file and not in the Mobility Package as a whole. I would like to request to the EP groups the same coherent and pragmatic approach on Posting, Cabotage and Rest and Driving Time files in order to reach an agreement. European Union hauliers need this agreement”
More info: david.vidal@europarl.europa.eu
