7th Symposium of Lawyer - Umberto de Pretto

“Diversity of controls and sanctions in goods road transport: helping your hauliers through the maze of unharmonised applications”

Welcome speech
by
Umberto De Pretto, Deputy Secretary General, IRU

Mesdames, Messieurs,

Ms Chairperson, Ladies and Gentlemen,

On behalf of the IRU, allow me to begin by thanking you all for being present with us today at this 7th IRU Symposium of Lawyers, and to thank, in particular, ASMAP for hosting this event in this beautiful city.

These biennial Symposia are important events, as they permit us to exchange views on important issues facing the road transport industry, and identify means to rectify problems experienced by the road transport operators we so proudly represent.

This symposium will examine the maze of unharmonised applications of controls and sanctions which place a disproportionate burden on the shoulders of road transport operators, but also on control authorities.

While we have gathered representatives of several countries, from different regions of the world, from Western Europe to Central Asia, I am certain that we will see that the problem we are addressing today is common to all, and will require us to act both at international and national level to remedy the situation.

This lack of harmonisation and coordination in controls creates market distortions, a reduction of drivers’ productivity, increased costs and lower returns on investment resources for both operators and authorities. In short, businesses, authorities, customers and society are all losing out.  This is because any penalty on road transport, as a vital production tool, is an even greater penalty on the economy as a whole.

While some attempts have been made to establish a common regulatory framework for road transport, enforcement and controls remain outside the scope of facilitation and harmonisation instruments.

Typically, the interpretation of legislation, enforcement, controls and sanctions are issues that are dealt with almost exclusively at national, and sometimes even at sub-national level.

As such, cooperation and information exchange between authorities must improve, and other stakeholders, such as the road transport industry, must be recognised as having a stake in the area of enforcement and control.

The IRU has already worked on this problem at EU level by developing a Memorandum on enforcement and controls in road transport. With this document the IRU identified the problems and highlighted the need for a platform where the majority of the stakeholders could exchange views, voice their concerns and identify potential solutions.

The Memorandum was disseminated among relevant EU institutions and a dedicated workshop was jointly organised in 2006 by the IRU and the European Commission, with the participation of industry and national enforcement authorities of EU Member States.

The Memorandum and the workshop could hardly have come at a more necessary time, coinciding with what amounted to a revolution in the EU road transport industry’s regulatory framework. The new EU Driving and Rest Time Rules Regulation and the new digital tachograph to enable their efficient enforcement were supposed to make life simpler for drivers and control officers alike. Unfortunately they have had an opposite effect and a single regulation designed for 27 EU Member States runs the risk of being interpreted and enforced in 27 different ways.

Sometimes, however, the machine really has to be in trouble before concerted efforts are taken to fix it and maybe even construct something better. The memorandum and the new rules have provoked a general recognition that while EU operators have common rules they rarely have common enforcement experiences. EU control officers and the IRU are now in partnership, drafting an article by article clarification of the new Regulation.  Even the European Commission has set up a ‘legal working group’  - which includes the IRU -  to issue enforcement guidance. We are moving in the right direction, the issues and problems are in sharper focus but the genuine partnership and joint platform of stakeholders needed to fix them are only just emerging.

However this problem, as you will hear today, is far from being limited to the EU. The IRU as a global organisation seeks a global approach.

The IRU’s Legal Commission, which met yesterday, has prepared a draft Resolution calling for better harmonisation, at the international level, of enforcement of regulations, controls and sanctions in road transport. It is our hope that you will support its contents at the conclusion of this Symposium so that we may then submit it to the IRU’s statutory bodies which will meet in 2 weeks time in Istanbul, during the IRU World Congress.  For any of you who have yet to register, I would encourage you to do so now as hotel space is limited, and it is a unique event you will not want to miss!

With this Resolution, the IRU and its Members will call upon government authorities at international and national level to implement a more effective enforcement and control of existing rules. Once we achieve this, our road transport operators and the business clients they serve, as well as the authorities and society as a whole will all gain from a simplified, clarified, harmonised and improved enforcement of regulations, controls and sanctions.

This can only be achieved by a genuine public-private partnership involving all relevant stakeholders through the IRU slogan “Working together for a better future”.

With this in mind, I would encourage you all to take an active part in today’s exchanges.

Thank you for your attention.

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