Considerations on COM(2023)702 - Amendment of Council Directive 92/106/EEC as regards a support framework for intermodal transport of goods and Regulation 2020/1056 as regards calculation of external costs savings and generation of aggregated data - Main contents
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| dossier | COM(2023)702 - Amendment of Council Directive 92/106/EEC as regards a support framework for intermodal transport of goods and Regulation ... |
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| document | COM(2023)702  |
| date | November 7, 2023 |
(2) Intermodal transport combines better environmental performance and energy efficiency of rail and waterborne transport with the accessibility and flexibility of road transport and is thus key in enabling the higher uptake of rail and waterborne freight transport. It also enables a more efficient allocation of volumes among transport modes and tackles effectively those road transport external costs which are hard to fully internalise, in particular congestion and accidents. However, the transport prices today do not yet reflect to the full extent the negative impacts caused by different modes and that hampers the effective reduction of the impacts of the externalities through the uptake of more sustainable freight transport options.
(3) Council Directive 92/106/EEC6, established a framework to encourage the development of intermodal transport, and in particular combined transport operations. It supports intermodal transport operations which compete with a unimodal road transport, and it is the main legislative act of the Union to incentivise the shift from road freight to lower emission transport modes such as inland waterways, short sea shipping and rail. While Directive 92/106/EEC contributed to the development of the Union's policy on modal shift, its limited scope, insufficient support and shortcomings in the implementation reduced its effectiveness. It is therefore necessary to ensure that intermodal transport operations in the Union which reduce the external costs by being environmentally friendlier, safer, more energy efficient and causing less congestion than road transport, would become attractive for shippers.
(4) Only intermodal transport operations that have a commercially viable unimodal road transport alternative lead to saving of external costs. Intermodal operations connecting islands and mainland have no road-alternative but external cost savings can be achieved by different routing using longer short sea shipping legs or different short sea shipping legs that allow a combination with rail and inland waterways transport.
(5) About one fifth of intermodal transport operations take place exclusively within a single Member State. However, the negative effect of national road transport operations, and notably greenhouse gas emissions and congestion, have an impact beyond the national borders of Member States. Therefore, to ensure that all operations contributing to the reduction of external costs are treated in the same way, it is necessary to incentivise at the Union level both international and national intermodal transport operations, including different modal combinations.
(6) For developing intermodal transport, the availability of transhipment terminals is essential. However, support measures for increasing terminal capacity should not be covered by this Directive, as they are included in [add a reference to the revised TEN-T Regulation, currently being negotiated by the co-legislators].
(7) Eligibility for the benefits from Directive 92/106/EEC is based on distance limits of different parts of operation. That approach of defining “combined transport operations” does not sufficiently support the objective of reducing external costs as it is not targeted enough. Furthermore, it does not reflect objectively the conditions and circumstances in different regions and disregards the characteristics of the environmental performance of the actual operation, including for instance the type of vehicle and fuel used. Therefore, the support provided should apply only to intermodal transport operations that ensure a sufficient level of external costs savings and allow an optimised use of the transport network. To capture such operations, a threshold of savings from external costs, including greenhouse gas (‘GHG’) emissions, air pollution, injuries and fatalities, noise and congestion, of an intermodal transport operation compared to the commercially viable alternative unimodal road operation should be set. The threshold should allow all modal combinations to benefit, while ensuring that rail, inland waterways and short sea shipping legs would constitute a major part of an intermodal operation. Moreover, external costs of all integral parts of the intermodal transport operation need to be taken into account when calculating the external costs savings to allow for fair comparison with other transport options.
(8) In the case of operations starting or ending outside the Union, or both, or starting and ending in the Union, but passing through a third country, the part of that intermodal transport operation that takes place in the Union should fall within the scope of this Directive, if that part of the operation fulfils the conditions set out in this Directive, given that it brings along modal shift within the Union.
(9) The intermodal transport operations can differ widely from each other as regards combinations of modes and number of different operational parts, including different number of transport legs. Combined transport operations supported under this Directive could involve either one or two road legs and one or several non-road legs. Given that none of the different transport legs of a combined transport operation would take place without the other legs, and in line with the Court case law, an operation from shipper to final receiver constitutes one single inseparable transport operation7. Therefore, barriers to any part of the intermodal operation would undermine the viability of the total intermodal operation and thus result in an increased use of unimodal road transport.
(10) To be able to follow intermodal loading units through the intermodal chain with the objective to establish the intermodal transport operations that can benefit from the support framework under this Directive, it is essential that intermodal loading units used in all those operations use existing and widely used means of identification and marking. Standardised identification should also speed up the handling of intermodal loading units in terminals and facilitate the flow of the intermodal transport operations.
(11) In container transport, there may be a need to pick up or bring back an empty container in a container depot before or after it is used for an intermodal transport operation. Where such depot runs are made with dedicated empty containers and are covered by the transport contract of the intermodal transport operation or by part thereof, they should also be considered an integral part of an intermodal transport operation.
(12) In order to ensure that only eligible intermodal transport operations benefit from the support framework established by this Directive, it is important to be able to verify the compliance of any operation with the conditions set out by the support framework. Modern digital tools can perform the calculation of the external costs savings and assist in verifying compliance. The platforms for digital transport data established pursuant to Regulation (EU) 1056/2020 of the European Parliament and of the Council8 (“eFTI platforms”) provide a suitable tool as they are built to include the regulatory information needed, including calculation of external costs savings. Therefore, the use of an eFTI platform should be mandatory for all operations that wish to benefit from the support framework.
(13) A common harmonised calculation methodology with reference values of external costs or sources of such reference values needs to be established and updated regularly, keeping the pace with developing knowledge and evidence base. Therefore, the exact methodology should be established by means of an implementing act, calculated in accordance with to the unit values established in the Handbook on the external costs of transport9, in its up-to-date version.
(14) The transport information required should be recorded in eFTI platforms before the start of an operation and be strictly limited to the data and calculations necessary for proof of compliance. To avoid administrative burdens, no additional information should be requested by national competent authorities for the purpose of compliance checks.
(15) In order to allow the Commission to comply with its reporting obligations set out by this Directive, certain data on combined transport operations recorded on eFTI platforms should be made available to the Commission annually, in aggregated form.
(16) The use of intermodal transport can be cost-competitive with unimodal road transport at longer distances as transport costs of non-road transport modes are usually lower per unit. However, at medium and shorter distances unimodal road transport is often chosen by shippers and transport organisers due to competitive pressures, because on such shorter distances the lower transport costs per unit are not sufficient to compensate for the additional organisational and transhipment costs deriving from the fact that intermodal transport involves several modes of transport. For medium distances, that difference in cost-competitiveness is on average 10%. Therefore, to stimulate a rapid increase in the uptake of intermodal transport on medium distances, Member States should adjust national policies and take the necessary regulatory and non-regulatory measures that improve the competitiveness of intermodal transport.
(17) Some Member States have national policies to promote intermodal rail, inland waterway or short sea shipping transport, aiming to reduce the cost difference between road transport and alternative transport options. However, those modal policies are not always aligned between the modes or between the neighbouring Member States. Furthermore, some Member States have no support measures in place. The fragmentation caused by uncoordinated approach reduces effectiveness of the existing support and results in an uneven playing field between the modes and Member States. Therefore, all Member States should establish and implement national policy frameworks to support the uptake of intermodal transport, considering the potential of each modal combination as well as the interactions of all modes comprehensively; Member States should regularly reassess the effectiveness and relevance of the national measures.
(18) The national policy frameworks should include both existing and planned national regulatory and non-regulatory measures impacting the competitiveness of intermodal transport used by a Member State, such as regulatory exemptions or preferential treatments; charges, taxes, fees and levies, including infrastructure, external-cost and congestion charges as well as those applying to unimodal road freight transport; and freight transport support schemes applying to individual modes or to intermodal transport, including those applying to unimodal road freight transport or specific parts of it. Support measures should apply equally to all operations meeting the conditions for being considered combined transport operations. Where necessary, Member States should cooperate with other neighbouring Member States, by means of consultation or joint policy frameworks. The coordination of those national policy frameworks and their coherence at the Union level should be supported by market analysis and reporting by the Commission.
(19) In order for medium-distance intermodal operations to become cost-competitive with unimodal road operations, and to motivate shippers to shift their operations to intermodal transport, the national policy frameworks should contribute to achieving a general cumulative reduction of at least 10% of total door-to-door costs of intermodal transport operations on the medium term. Measures to achieve such reduction can include legal, economic, fiscal, or administrative adjustments and arrangements. Member States may use the revenues generated according to Directive 1999/62/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council10 to benefit the intermodal transport operations covered by this Directive. Subject to the rules applicable to specific programmes, the support can be also funded from existing Union financial instruments.
(20) Furthermore, to enable the use of intermodal transport, it is important to have dedicated support for investments allowing a necessary upgrade of intermodal technologies. That support can address technological needs in terminals or in any of the modes involved in intermodal transport.
(21) Where there are no connections other than road between certain terminals or in their vicinity, “start-up” support to open new intermodal connections could be necessary as demand for services at start-up phase may not be sufficient to ensure profitability of such services.
(22) Member States can introduce State aid measures to achieve the goals of the European Green Deal and the Climate Law, provided those measures are compatible with the internal market.
(23) Support measures introduced in national policy frameworks could constitute State aid. When a Member State establishes measures in its national policy framework, it should assess if any of those measures constitutes State aid, it is without prejudice to the application of Articles 107 and 108 TFEU. Where a measure constitutes State aid, the procedural and substantive State aid rules will apply. It is understood that the compatibility assessment of State aid measures falls within the exclusive competence of the Commission pursuant to Article 108 TFEU.
(24) To ensure that practical information about available support measures implemented by Member States is easily accessible publicly and free of charge to all operators in the Union, it should be made accessible on a dedicated webpage in a central location allowing the undertakings organising international operations to find it easily.
(25) It is important to have an overview of market developments and the impact of the support measures on the uptake of intermodal transport. Such market overview should ensure comparability across the Union. The Commission should therefore continue reporting the market developments with assistance from the Member States. Such a report should establish first the baseline for cost-competitiveness of intermodal transport with road transport, and then be conducted every 5 years to allow sufficient time for any support measures to produce effects.
(26) Dedicated regulatory provisions at Union level that address specific situations in intermodal transport can support the uptake and efficiency of intermodal transport. To ensure efficient terminal and non-road capacity use, it is important that the operation of terminals and non-road transport is not hindered by temporal driving limitations on road legs.
(27) To ensure that information about services and facilities available in any intermodal transhipment terminal is easily accessible to all operators and transport organisers in the Union, that information should be published free of charge by terminal operators on their webpage. To provide a framework for identifying a service level of intermodal transhipment terminals in the Union, a detailed list of such information should be established in an implementing act.
(28) Comparability of service levels in different terminals in the Union should be ensured by establishing a categorisation for intermodal transhipment terminals. Such categorisation should avoid excessive complexity and burdens and should therefore be based on already published information.
(29) A dedicated support for intermodal transport is only necessary until the market price adequately represents the total cost of various transport operations to society. Therefore, a review should be carried out after 10 years to assess whether such support is still relevant and if so, how it may need to be adjusted.
(30) In order to allow implementation this Directive, eFTI platforms should provide functionalities to calculate external costs savings and generate aggregated data.
(31) In order to take into account the technical nature of certain requirements, the power to adopt acts in accordance with Article 290 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union should be delegated to the Commission in respect of supplementing this Directive with the list of further data needed for calculating the external costs saving of an intermodal transport operation, necessary for demonstrating the compliance with this Directive and rules for making the annual aggregated data on combined transport operations available for market analysis. It is of particular importance that the Commission carry out appropriate consultations during its preparatory work, including at expert level, and that those consultations be conducted in accordance with the principles laid down in the Interinstitutional Agreement of 13 April 2016 on Better Law-Making11. In particular, to ensure equal participation in the preparation of delegated acts, the European Parliament and the Council receive all documents at the same time as Member States' experts, and their experts systematically have access to meetings of Commission expert groups dealing with the preparation of delegated acts.
(32) In order to ensure uniform conditions for the implementation of this Directive and in particular of the detailed rules for the calculation of external costs, the list of predefined alternative intermodal operation routes for island and mainland connections and the information to be provided for the services available in terminals and on terminal categorisation, implementing powers should be conferred on the Commission. Those powers should be exercised in accordance with Regulation (EU) No 182 /2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council12.
(33) The objective of this Directive is to further promote the shift of freight transport from road to more environmentally friendly modes of transport, with a view to reduce the external costs of the Union transport system. Given that intermodal transport is primarily international in nature and infrastructure is interlinked, that objective cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States but can rather be better achieved at Union level. Therefore, the Union may adopt measures, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity as set out in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union. In accordance with the principle of proportionality as set out in that Article, this Directive does not go beyond what is necessary to achieve those objectives.
(34) In order to allow for the continuation of seamless cross-border transport operations in the Union, the application of national laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to transpose this Directive should be deferred until eFTI platforms are available. That deferred application should be without prejudice to the obligations of the Member States relating to the time limit for the transposition into national law.
(35) In accordance with the Joint Political Declaration of 28 September 2011 of Member States and the Commission on explanatory documents13, Member States have undertaken to accompany, in justified cases, the notification of their transposition measures with one or more documents explaining the relationship between the components of a directive and the corresponding parts of national transposition instruments. With regard to this Directive, the legislator considers the transmission of such documents to be justified.
(36) Directive 92/106/EC and Regulation (EU) 2020/1056 should therefore be amended accordingly,