The “Common Office” – uniting hauliers from France, the Nordic countries and Germany – welcomes the upcoming “Fit for 55 Package” and the aim to accelerate the green transition of the transport sector. However, we also call for a climate package with appropriate measures and targets to tackle climate change. Over the last 20 years, the Road Haulage sector already made a significant contribution to sustainability, and we are ready to take up the new challenges to reduce CO2-emissions in the transport sector.
Double and triple taxation of the same CO2-emissions via different tools such as the Emission Trading System (ETS), the “Eurovignette” Directive and the Energy Taxation Directive must be avoided. Road haulage companies are more than willing to buy climate-neutral technologies as soon as these are available at competitive prices and supported by the necessary green infrastructure. Finally, we recall that the green transition must also be a just transition. Therefore, great attention has to be paid to the potential increase of energy prices and to which extent final consumers are able to bear such increases.
However, the public sector will not be able to finance the “green transition” alone. More sustainability can only be achieved together with the private sector and its massive investments. This is especially true for a road haulage sector dominated by family-owned SMEs. A financially healthy transport industry is absolutely necessary to achieve the reduction targets of CO2-emissions while guaranteeing the supply of goods and commodities to citizens in Europe, the importance of which was recently highlighted by the COVID-19 crisis.
As long as there is no sound alternative to today’s technologies, increasing the costs for transport services will simply have the effect of punishing the road haulage sector and will not help the sector to become “greener”. For example, the price of an electric truck is 3 to 4 times higher than a diesel truck. Battery-powered trucks for long-distance transport will probably not be available until 2025. And the first hydrogen truck in mass production is not foreseen before 2027. Therefore, policymakers also have to recognise the role of low-carbon-based fuels and fuels generated from non-fossil sources like green biofuel in the short term.
Contacts:
BGL – Dirk Saile: +32 (0) 2 230 10 82
FNTR – Isabelle Maître: + 32 (0) 476 98 42 83
NLA – Torsten Laksafoss Holbek: + 32 (0) 474 04 8005
