EP and Council negotiators agreed on rules to improve tracing of
drivers who fail to pay road tolls and to ease use of one
on-board device when driving across the EU.
An informal agreement between Council and Parliament reached on
Tuesday improves information exchange on vehicle data for better
enforcement of payment of road tolls by drivers from another EU
country.
The agreed rules also remove barriers in the toll collection
market to allow service providers develop a system for customers
to use a single on-board toll payment device when travelling
across the EU.
Rapporteur Massimilano
Salini (EPP, IT) said: “By giving the green light
for the implementation of an interoperable EU electronic toll
system, we created a harmonized and simplified service capable of
creating huge benefits, helping both European citizens and firms
save hundreds of millions of euros.
It was simply absurd that today, in the largest and most advanced
single market in the world, private citizens and truck drivers
alike still needed to be equipped with on-board equipment for six
or seven different systems in order to circulate freely on the
Union’s motorways.
I found it to be of the utmost importance to overcome the
obstacles that prevented until now the collection of fees in case
motorway users from another EU country failed to pay the tolls,
leading to substantive losses for the firms concerned.”
Next steps
The agreement on the revision of the European Electronic Tolling
Service (EETS) Directive now needs to be confirmed by the
Parliament and the Council.
