Amendment of Combined Transport Directive - a BusinessEurope position paper

Key messages

• Focus on the multimodal optimisation in European transport, while avoiding a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, as the expected increase in demand for freight transport services must be accommodated by all different transport modes.
• Establish the Single Market freedom to provide services across borders as the underlying principle to ensure that the Directive guarantees the seamless functioning of a cross-border transport system and prevents the creation of additional barriers.
• Urgently update the current Handbook on the external costs of transport to include a wider list of external costs considered for eligibility – environmental, social, economic – from all modes of transport before the entry into force of the Directive.
• Provide further clarity regarding the common methodology for calculating the 40% external cost reduction target, ensure legal consistency with other legal texts and avoid diverging methodologies.
• Increase the level of ambition for Member States’ reduction in total costs of combined transport operations, avoid a patchwork of national support measures and guarantee measures’ compatibility with the Single Market principles.
• Ensure a simple and quick use of the eFTI platforms and align the data and reporting requirements for undertakings and operators concerned with the Commission’s commitment to reduce reporting requirements by 25%.