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8th IRU TransEuro Road Transport Conference
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8th IRU TransEuro Road Transport Conference
19-20 May 2005, Tallinn-Estonia |
In partnership with
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One year after EU Enlargement:
New challenges, new opportunities
The IRU and its Estonian National Association ERAA would like to extend a special thank to
for its partnership and contribution to the 8th TransEuro Road Transport Conference.
We thank also for their support to
Welcome Addresses
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Paul Laeremans, IRU President, Belgium
The unification of the transport markets of old and new EU member states has been a smooth and mostly successful process. Trade, tourism and road transport have gained enormously from the disappearance of internal borders. Costs and the time requirements of transport operations have decreased, while the utilisation level of rolling stock and the productivity of international road transport operators have grown.
But, to be complete, we need to recognise, despite the increasing market opportunities, that competition in our fully liberalised sector (except for certain areas in passenger transport by bus and coach) has sharpened and has reduced the return on investment.
Therefore, the EU bodies and governments should rouse themselves and find solutions to long-lasting problems such as the lack of harmonised implementation of the Community ‘acquis', the waiting times at the EU external borders, the costly and complex procedure to obtain visas for international drivers, and so on. Nor should we tolerate any longer that due to the lack of efficient criteria for access to the profession, our industry continues to suffer from the actions of "black sheep", the fraudsters, the unfair players. |
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1 st Interactive Session:
"One Year After …" - Changes in Economic, Trade & Tourism Development - Impact on Road Transport
Moderated by Umberto de Pretto, IRU Deputy Secretary General
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Robert Nowak, Economic Affairs Officer, UNECE, Economic Analysis Division
Trade between "old" and "new" EU member states (expressed in euros) has shown increasing tendency between 2001 and 2004.
The size of the "Internal Market" increased long before the formal enlargement with many of "enlargement" benefits realised prior to 2004.
With the full participation in the Internal Market: the remainder of border and non-border trade measures have been lifted. Overall, labour mobility however, continues to be severely restricted. The residual effect of formal membership is believed to be a relativey small in new EU countries. This does not necessarily preclude large future economic gains in EU-25.
A true convergence (integration) across east and west can be facilitated if new members allowed to uilise their comparative advantages (e.g., cheaper labour) to grow faster than EU-15. |
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Klaas Westerkamp, NEA Project Manager, Netherlands
Competition cannot be measured on the basis of market shares of different nationalities. Hauliers from Western Europe have increasingly focused on setting up branches in Central and Eastern European countries. In the first stage, these branches were used to carry out international transport between Western and Central and Eastern Europe. In the second stage, these originally Western Europe based hauliers discovered the attractive domestic markets in Central and Eastern Europe, especially the market for distribution services and logistics. |
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Marco Sorgetti, CLECAT Director General, Italy
Quality (rapidity, security, no damages…) or low rates ? Freight forwarders' service (& challenge) consists in delivering the highest quality at the lowest price.
However, shippers should understand that both elements are interlinked - Freight rates may impact on the overall cost of the final product, but logistic costs are often overestimated as compared to quality.The FF and the carriers should be in a partnership = this is the solution.
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Rachel Tym, ETOA Ecommerce and European Affairs Manager, United Kingdom
The outstanding issues for coach tour operators of today are the following: drivers' hours, legislation on emissions and access of disabled persons to coaches and buses. As to the accession countries, Western European business models are already in place there, cabotage has been liberalised to a large extent and there is a positive image of Eastern Europe as an interesting tourist destination. Eastern European coach operators have some advantages over Western European counterparts: their drivers tend to be more service orientated, they appear to be cost effective, they are geographically better placed to operate in Eastern Europe and, finally, standards of their vehicles and drivers are rising every year. Their disadvantages: more investigation needed by clients before using their services and Eastern European companies are uneasy about i) insurance coverage, ii) origin of coaches and iii) safety standards of their vehicles. In addition, some drivers lack tour driving experience and sufficient knowledge of languages.
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1st Conference Briefing: "One Year After …" - Estonia on the Move
Moderated by Umberto de Pretto, IRU Deputy Secretary General
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Erki Sakkov, Marketing Director, Port of Tallinn, Estonia
Results of Tallinn Port in 2004: 37.6 mln tonnes of cargo, 113 thousand TEU containers, 6.74 mln passengers, 3,182 cargo ship calls, 9,199 passenger ship calls and 232 cruise ship calls. |
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Andres Tint, Minister, Secretary General, Ministry of Economy & Communications, Estonia
In 2004, Estonian carriers carried 95 million tons of goods, among which the share of transit goods was 57%. 95% of transit shipments go through the Estonian ports, accounting for 75% of all the goods passing through the ports. The volume of transit shipments increased almost 3 times during the last decade. The turnover of goods of the ports servicing transit was 12.5% higher in April 2005 compared to April 2004. |
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Toivo Kuldkepp, ERAA Secretary General, Estonia
The industry should send a clear message to the public that the road carriers are nice people who care for safety and the environment and that they are prepared to undertake even large-scale investments for this purpose. ERAA has decided to act as an initiator and prepare four logistics villages of the "Autohof type" in strategically important locations along the main roads in Estonia, where both our entrepreneurs as well as the related service organizations, required by our carriers, could settle and offer their services. |
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2nd Interactive Session: "One Year After …" - Road Transport Companies’ Response
Moderated by Hubert Linssen, IRU Permanent Delegate to the EU, Belgium
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Izzet Salah, CEO, Selamoglu Co., Turkey
After the enlargement, analysts state, freight costs in new EU member countries have decreased by about 25 %. The intensive competition triggered by road transport operators from the new EU member countries poses a challenge both for the West European transport and logistics industry as well as the Turkish hauliers. These countries use the utmost advantage and power of EU accession and the ones, who rebelled for unfair practices before, are today in a position to apply similar unfair practices today. |
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Nigel Baxter, RH Group, United Kingdom
"It is virtually impossible to build and generate a business with the required level of local expertise, language and management from the base of a medium sized operator. Certainly not in a short period, since that preserve is saved only for those benefiting from the investment of almost limitless public funds, principally for acquisitions, Deutsche Post being of course the most extreme example. Thus in reality there is no other solution for a business such as ours than to literally deliver performance and growth in a relatively short period of time. Thus in early 2001 we made our first visit to Estonia in search of hauliers with the capacity, experience and expertise to provide us with good services. What impresses me about these companies, actually about so much of this area, is the level of enthusiasm, the hunger and desire to get it right, whilst it would be wrong to suggest that this exercise has been easy." |
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Airat Ismagilov, General Director, Kengatrans, Russian Federation
At the moment small and medium sized road transport businesses in Russia that transport goods internationally are faced with the problem of reduced profitability.
Following the enlargement of EC countries some of the transit loads of "Kengatrans’" customers from Finland moved to the Baltic. The number of orders for the company in this direction has decreased by 23%.
As a result problems for "Kengatrans" have become even more acute. First of all there was the problem of acquiring rolling stock that complied with modern ecological requirements.
"Kengatrans’" transport fleet is 6 – 7 years old on average and its 50% complies with Euro 2, the other 50% with Euro 1. |
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Tudor Rusu, Director General, Taxi Service & Co-Chairman of the Road & Transport Workers Union (UTD), Moldova
Taxi operations have received a new development impulse within the frameworks of the market economy. One of these impulses that positively affects the development of the taxi is the concurrence. There are a lot of large, middle-sized taxi companies not only in big cities but also in small towns. Unfortunately those companies have no transparent and fixed rules regulating their services. The city roads were flooded by the self-employed drivers working without any rules and control. |
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Rolf Wölfert, Head Marketing/Product Manager, Deutsche Touring GmbH, Germany
There are important changes in the business environment. Low cost airlines are attacking international passenger transport markets. Not all their clients are totally new but the market is divided between more players. As to new regular lines, newcomers believe that coach lines are "cash machines", therefore, exiting markets are under attack of "low fares – low income" operators. How to survive? If you cannot beat them, join them. Buy services in the new Member States and establish an own Company with own drivers or with drivers and coaches there. |
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3rd Interactive Session: "One Year After …" - Borders and Barriers
Moderated by Peter Krausz, IRU Head – Goods Transport & Facilitation
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Vladimir F. Gorovikov, Director Vladigortrans Ltd., Transport Company, Belarus
The problems existing today with visas for professional drivers involved with international goods transport by road damage the European integration process and they are in conflict with the principles of the free movement of goods and services across borders, the equality of economic trade conditions and other principles of European economic integration. The complexity of issuing visas to professional drivers and the severity of consular demands significantly slow down the further development of international road transport which is otherwise the most mobile and long-range method of international goods transport |
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Hugo Osula, Coach Operator, Eurolines Estonia, Estonia
Unfortunately, EU expansion did not extend the list of "Schengen-visa countries". It poses problems for non-EU citizens traveling through the new Member States of the EU.
Within the EU, international regular bus traffic is free of a previous serious obstacle, the considerable time lost at border crossings. For example, on the Tallinn-Berlin busline, time needed for border crossings has decreased from 6-7 to 2 hours.
The opening of the international coach transport market has unfortunately coincided with the market opening for air traffic. More than thirty cheap airlines have started successful business in the new EU Member States resulting in an abnormal drop of tariffs. The competition between coach and air transport is, however, not fair due to a discriminative fiscal treatment of coach transport companies as compared to airlines.
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Janusz Lacny, IRU Vice-President, JMJ-TRANS, Poland
Generally speaking, the EU enlargement on 1 May 2004 resulted in facilitating trade and transport at least among 25 EU Member States. Internal borders between these countries together with long queues of heavy goods vehicles due to heavy customs controls vanished, leaving only quick passport controls. From the theoretical point of view, the beneficial impact of lifting borders can be listed as follows: shorter transport time, reduced costs of transport operations, increased productivity of transport companies, more revenues for entrepreneurs, etc. Such a result could have been predicted long before last year’s enlargement. And it was indeed predicted, unfortunately by entrepreneurs inexperienced in road transport.
But theory does not necessarily go in line with practice. Reduced costs of transport have already been compensated by new infrastructure charges introduced recently, and increased revenues for entrepreneurs vanished with the decrease of freight rates due to severe competition on the transport market generated by an excessive and unjustified optimism of some hauliers, mainly newcomers in the business. |
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Sébastien Schmitt, General Director, Vialtis Co., France
Tout d’abord, nous conseillons aux transporteurs routiers d’utiliser un professionnel reconnu pour récupérer sa TVA en Europe, car il y a des risques majeurs de ne pas récupérer ou de récupérer partiellement et/ou tardivement sa TVA si le transporteur dépose directement ses dossiers (qui coûtera finalement plus cher que la commission du prestataire). Si cela reste concevable pour le dépôt dans un seul pays où l’on maîtrise la langue, cela devient quasiment inconcevable pour plus de 3 pays.
Il faut bien se rendre compte qu’au-delà du cadre communautaire, chaque pays a ses règles et ses formalismes pour présenter dans les meilleures conditions un dossier. De plus, les règles en matière de facturation et de déductibilité de TVA sont propres à chaque pays et sont donc une entrave supplémentaire pour le dépôt direct par l’entreprise de transport. |
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Conference Briefing: "One Year After …" – We Need Roads, but Who Pays for Them?
Moderated by Peter Krausz, IRU Head – Goods Transport & Facilitation
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Dr Laszlo Ruppert, KTI General Director, Hungary
If Europe wants to develop its economy, a well-designed transport infrastructure is a must for connecting organically the enlarged Europe. Positive results are that while in the last twelve years the EU15 increased its motorway network nearly by 35%, for the EU10 the increase of its network reached 52%. In spite of this, the development of the newly associated countries need more support for the development of the Trans-European Network. Between 1998 and 2001, the road obtained only 26% of the TEN-T budget, which might have been good enough for the former EU, but this rate is certainly be not sufficiently high for the enlarged Europe. |
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Martin Rickmann, Toll Collect GmbH, Germany
Considerable start management allowed a smooth introduction of Toll Collect System. Before start, various analysis and measures have been carried out, such as a detailed analysis of "traffic flows" and identified neuralgic locations, measures to control and manage the traffic flow, recruitment and training of support teams to help users at terminals, placing of first support teams in field four weeks before start and preparation of potential FAQ-Lists and translation in relevant languages.
There has been a close cooperation between the Ministry of Transport and Toll Collect and other external partners such as with national and international haulage associations throughout the start phase. |
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Gudula Schwan, Bundesamt für Güterverkehr, Germany
Between 1 January and 31 March 2005, 4 million trucks were checked on German motorways on toll payments. The toll violation ratio was found to be 3 per cent. The number of infringements decreased in the following way: 30'000 in January, 20'000 in February and 16'000 in March. The progress of toll revenue was as follows: Euros 208 million in January, 215 in February and 238 in March 2005. |
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Interactive Session: "One Year After …" - Future Expectations / Changing Legal Framework
Moderated by Guy Willis, IRU Head Communications
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Isabelle Kardacz, Head of Unit, Land Transport Policy, European Commission, DG TREN
Ce libre accès au marché intérieur de l’UE a entraîné non seulement une croissance de trafic et du volume de marchandises transportées, mais il a aussi déclenché une restructuration du secteur du transport routier : la concurrence a augmenté, ce qui a entraîné une baisse des prix du transport facilitant ainsi le développement économique. Malgré l’augmentation continue des volumes acheminés (qui ont doublé en 20 ans), les marges nettes des transporteurs routiers ont continuellement diminué et sont parfois au-dessous de 1%. Ce développement a encore été renforcé par l’élargissement. |
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Martine-Sophie Fouvez, Principal Administrator, ECMT
The multilateral quota system for road transport licences, introduced over 30 years ago, is undoubtedly one of the ECMT's most important contributions to the organisation of international road freight transport. While facilitating market access, the system has at the same time helped to improve the quality of transport, in particular by linking the issue of licences to the use of vehicles which are both safer and environmentally less aggressive. With the context prevailing in Europe having changed appreciably, the system now needs to be reformed in such a way as to adjust it to the new political and economic conditions. |
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Mike Freeman, Head of International Affairs, RHA, United Kingdom
Some legislation is poorly thought out and favours only the large and wealthy companies. The question then, is whether small companies can survive flawed legislation and whether excessive legislation kills off competition. |
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Francesco Pacifico, IRU Vice-President, Vice-President Associazione Nazionale Autotrasporto Viaggiatori (ANAV), Italy
In recent years, low-cost airlines have largely benefited from various forms of tax privileges and subsidies to considerably increase their market share to the detriment of those of buses and coaches.
Such is also the case with procurement contracts where, among other things, EU enlargement has opened the door in the new Member States to large companies, thereby enabling the latter to optimise their offer at prices verging on dumping.
The statistics which will enable us to clearly apprehend this development and to adjust our business strategies are still missing. This is why our industry has long requested the Community and intergovernmental bodies to establish appropriate statistical instruments to monitor the development of domestic and international transport by bus and coach in Europe so as to base business strategies and political measures on fact. |
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Dario Salvati, IVECO, Sales & Marketing Director, Italy
"EU should refrain from adopting technical legislation outside the type approval framework... Regulatory proposals should be prioritised and timetabled in a strategic way. Large numbers of regulations are implemented within a short space of time, leaving no lead time for industry to properly schedule technical solutions and investment...
EU legislation should be simplified by strengthening the links between the European regulatory system and the United Nations 1958 Agreement framework... Global harmonisation of motor vehicle regulations and certification procedures should be promoted through UNECE's World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations (WP.29)." |
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Conclusions
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Martin Marmy, IRU Secretary General
Let me reconfirm the fullest commitment of the IRU and of its member associations to improve recognition of professionalism within our industry through the IRU Academy and to ensure the sustainable development of passenger and goods transport systems and logistics, at the heart of which you always find road transport.
The series of IRU TransEuro Conferences has fulfilled its mission. While not losing sight of the many remaining tasks on the European Continent, future IRU EuroAsian Road Transport Conferences will unite the road transport industry’s European and EuroAsian biannual events into one joint reflection and strategic decision-making forum in the years to come. I look forward to seeing you all in Beijing on 26-27 September and then at the next IRU EuroAsian Conference foreseen in Poland in 2007, following the recent invitation of our Polish association, ZMPD! |
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