CLECAT outlines its position on the way forward for EU White Paper on Transport
6th March - At the hearing of the EESC on “The White Paper on Transport”, CLECAT addressed the needs of the logistics sector with regards to the future European transport policy. Mr Marc Huybrechts, President of CLECAT, said: ‘the logistics sector is best placed to consider transport as a system rather than a collection of individual modes, and this way of thinking must be adopted by the whole transport sector and policy makers. The goal must be to make all modes and the connection between them as efficient and sustainable as possible through infrastructure, ICT and open markets. The success of this will be strongly dependent on the success of key policies aimed at market opening, international cooperation and agreements safeguarding competition in international transport and trade, and greater innovation to improve the efficiency of all modes of freight transport. With this in mind, CLECAT has identified 5 priorities: completion of Europe’s single transport market, internationalisation, digitalisation, innovation and better connectivity through sound infrastructure investment.
Mr Huybrechts took the opportunity to express his concern about new burdensome reporting requirements for industry as a consequence of new national regulations. This is perceived by many as a move towards protectionism and against the spirit of a single European transport market. He noted: ‘We fear that this may lead to a proliferation of national rules and urge the European Commission to question these developments in the strongest possible ways.’
The CLECAT position paper on the White Paper is available here.
The Manifesto is available here.