LA VALLETTA (MALTA) (MNA/ITALPRESS) – Malta and six other EU member states have won a court ruling against a law that would have forced trucks and heavy vehicles to return to their country of origin every eight weeks.
The victory ends a four-year dispute against the ‘return of vehicles’ rule in the EU’s mobility package.
Malta, Poland, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus and Hungary argued that it unfairly burdened local companies with excessive costs.
The member states, many of them on Europe’s periphery, argued that the rules were protectionist and undermined their ability to compete in the free market.
The European Court of Justice ruled that the European Parliament and Council had “not established that they had sufficient information at their disposal when that measure was adopted to enable them to assess its proportionality”.
The Malta’s business lobby argued, while this was a relatively simple matter of crossing a land border for haulage companies across mainland Europe, it made things far costlier for Maltese haulage companies, who had to ferry their vehicles back to Malta. This process added “disproportionate additional costs to the road transport operators and consequently to business clients and end consumers” and placed Malta at a disadvantage.
Both the government and opposition in Malta expressed their satisfaction at the ECJ’s ruling.
The transport ministry said that the rule had been causing “logistical complications” and negatively impacting emissions and costs by forcing operators to undertake several unnecessary journeys to comply with the rules.
Meanwhile, Nationalist MEP Peter Agius said the ruling could have “wider political repercussions” in addressing similar injustices in maritime and air travel, such as the “unfair and the equally disproportionate ETS Maritime scheme which is now favouring north African ports to the prejudice of Malta Freeport”.(ITALPRESS).
Foto: trl
