The Ministry for Transport, Infrastructure and Public Works welcomes the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) against the rule that obliges transport operators to return their vehicles to the Member State in which they are registered.
This rule was limiting anyone who wants to transport material from one country to another and because of this, logistical complications were being created in all European Member States. This apart from the fact that it was negatively impacting the environmental aspect due to the considerable amount of unnecessary journeys that were being made by the operators while there were unprecedented increases in fuel prices.
According to a study carried out by KPMG in 2020, commissioned by the Ministry responsible for Transport, if the companies were to accept all the new rules proposed by the European Commission, the additional cost for operators would have been it will amount to more than €5 million and an increase of another 42 trucks.
The Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Public Works, Chris Bonett, explained how our country was at the forefront of fighting this injustice that was introduced in 2020 when the European Union introduced new rules based on Mobility The completed Package 1 had a major impact on the international trucking industry.
“Together with other European Member States, as a Maltese Government we legally fought these rules in the Court of Justice of the European Union because we understood that this sector, which has an important part in the economy of our country, needed to the operators have the best conditions in their work and we minimize as much as we can the environmental impact in this sector,” stressed Minister Bonett.
This industry is important for Malta because it takes care of 77% of the country’s imports and exports from and to the EU. The Ministry will be carefully analyzing this sentence together with everyone who is part of this industry with the aim of continuing to improve the operation in this sector.
