Opening Ceremony - Zoltan Kazatsay

IRU XXVIII^th World Congress
Under the Patronage of the President of Romania, Ion Iliescu

Opening Ceremony

Zoltan Kazatsay
Deputy State Secretary, Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications
Hungary

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

As a representative of the Hungarian Ministry of Economics and Transport and Chairman of the ECMT Group on Road Transport, I welcome the highly regarded participants of the IRU Congress.

On behalf of the Hungarian Governmental institution responsible for the transport sector, I would like to express our high appreciation for the efforts IRU has performed in the activities of international road transport. On the other hand we have a very useful and constructive cooperation with your Hungarian member association ATRH and we intend to follow this exercise the same way in the future as well.

In my other capacity as Chairman of the ECMT Group on Road Transport, I would like to thank the IRU for their active contribution to the work of the group.   You have delegated an outstanding expert to attend our sessions regularly who could forward your positions to the representatives of 41 member states in a variety of issues studied by us.

The decision-making body of the Conference, the ECMT Council of Ministers - which is to celebrate its 50^th anniversary next year - discussed many topics at their yesterday’s meeting that closely affect the users of road transport, including the social implications of road transport, the ECMT multilateral quota system, road safety and visa for drivers.

The professional approach of ECMT is in line with the principles of the IRU.  Both give priority to the social and technical safety of the users of road transport and connect economically efficient operation to this principle.

ECMT operates a multilateral permit system allowing transport in any direction between the member states.  The principle guiding its further development is to link it to the progress made by each member state in the field of social affairs.

The freedom created by multilateral permits is no applicable if the visa required of drivers in certain member states reduce the flexible adaptation of transport operators to the expectations of the freight market, not to mention the financial implications involved.  Moreover, the handling of visas further narrows the bottleneck of border waiting times.  That is why the Council of Ministers adopted a resolution on the simplification of the visa issuing procedure.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

The ECMT Group on Road Transport expect the IRU to continue their active contribution to the efforts that aim to increase the transparency and predictability of the complex world of road transport.

The cooperation between the two organisations promotes the harmonisation of state administration and economic/business interests both across Europe and at national level.

In the spirit of this, I wish you good and fruitful work at the IRU Congress.

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