After months of uncertainty, the European Commission decided to keep the proposal for a new Combined Transport Directive alive. The decision was reportedly made at the end of July but was just made public by UIRR, who was among the main advocates to save the directive.
“The legislative work must now move forward”, the association said. However, it is still unclear what the continuation of the Directive will look like, since all parties involved struggled for years to agree on a new definition of combined transport. This is a vital step to expand the pool of entities that would be eligible for subsidies, increasing the competitiveness of the sector.
The current definition of combined transport was made in 1992 and is based on the length of the rail leg. In other words, if the goods travel for at least 100 kilometres by rail, the service is eligible for financial support. With the revision, there would be a shift from distance-based criteria to one tied to the reduction of external costs. However, these external costs and how they are calculated are the main bone of contention which convinced the Commission to drop the directive last October.