Road tolls: provisional deal on easier payment and better collection of fees
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 where you can 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.
Contacts:
-
Jaan SOONE
Press Officer