By Nina Renshaw T&E Deputy Director There is a moment for everything in life. As a campaigning organisation, we often have to work very hard to create the moment for the things we believe in. The right moment came two years ago for mandatory carbon dioxide emissions standards for cars, and for taking the first tentative steps towards making aviation address its environmental costs. The moment has now arrived for another decisive step towards sustainable transport – the Eurovignette.
The Eurovignette – a shorthand term for charging heavy trucks for the use of major European roads – has been around for a long time, but in a form that limits its usefulness. The purpose of the Eurovignette is to set the rules on how to charge road hauliers for the external costs they cause, but under existing rules, governments are banned from covering the costs to the environment, or the costs of accidents or congestion! The result is that road transport continues to get a free ride from the rest of society, which leads to wasteful behaviour (empty lorries, poor load factors, ever longer distances), which in turn increase emissions of noise, air pollutants and greenhouse gases.
The issue of getting users to pay for the external costs of their activity is by no means new. The EU’s white paper on the Common Transport Policy of 2001 talked about internalising costs of transport, so why has it not yet happened? There has always been strong opposition from the road haulage industry, and peripheral nations such as Spain have also objected, fearing they will be disadvantaged.
But things are now changing, and the economic downturn has a lot to do with it. France, the UK, Hungary and Denmark have serious plans for introducing kilometre-charging schemes for lorries, and many other countries are studying the options.
Governments are suddenly having to make very tough choices to tackle deficits: where to cut costs and where to raise taxes? Measures which bring in money while steering behaviour patterns in a socially and environmentally justified direction suddenly look attractive – a lot more so than cutting back on public sector employment or raising income taxes. But above all, finally implementing the ‘polluter pays’ principle will kick off a virtuous circle, where congestion, pollution and accidents are reduced, as well as the costs that come with them (for example time wasted in traffic jams, or healthcare bills). We’ve seen in the past month how Germany has embraced the idea of an air ticket tax, and it is also extending its motorway toll (the ‘Maut’) to four-lane national roads – these measures are as much for financial reasons as environmental, but the result is the same. Even the Spanish construction federation is calling for more road tolls.
The moment has arrived for proper transport pricing, and the baton has fallen to Belgium, which takes over the EU presidency at the end of this month. With the Eurovignette revision back on the agenda, the Belgians have six-months to steer through a meaningful piece of legislation after 15-20 years of the principle being agreed but no-one being prepared to put it into practice. It’s up to Belgium – and the rest of Europe – to seize the moment.
