ECIPE Webinar: The Mobility Package 1 Proposals – Unfit for the Single Market?

The Mobility Package 1 legislative proposal is up for a vote in the European Parliament. Initially, it was intended to improve the working conditions of the truck and small-van drivers in the EU. The European Commission also explicitly aimed at securing a smooth and non-discriminatory functioning of the Single Market.

Yet, the legislative procedure towards the latest version of the Mobility Package was hijacked by a protectionist agenda of vested interests in Western Europe. Pushed by the French government, some Western European governments and Members of the European Parliament’s Transport Committee designed tighter freight cabotage and return-to-home provisions to shield Western European transport markets against the competition from other EU Member States.

If ratified, the new EU-imposed law would discriminate against EU citizens that hold the wrong EU passport, mainly people from Central and Eastern European Member States. Maintaining EU-imposed measures on the freedom to provide transport services would increase tensions between countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Western Europe – economically, mentally and politically. Industry assessments also show that additional limitations on freight transport within the Single Market would result in higher CO2 emissions which would counteract the EU’s ambitious European Green Deal.

Join us for a discussion on the restrictions proposed in the latest Mobility Package 1. We will discuss the following questions:

– What would be the social and economic impacts of the latest proposals?

– Despite the initial objective to liberalise freight transport services, the current EU law-imposed restrictions to cabotage have been left untouched. Why?

– The latest legislative proposal includes mandatory “cooling-off” and “return-to-base” provisions, which were explicitly designed to keep Eastern Europeans out of Western Europe’s transport markets. Where did these provisions come from? What would be their impacts?

– If ratified by the European Parliament, the Mobility Package 1 would add to the European Unions’ systemic Single Market disease. What would be its impact on European integration?