Discours - Paul Laeremans

CTP SEMINAR ON HARMONISED RULES AND CONTROLS FOR INTERNATIONAL BUS AND COACH TRANSPORT

CTP Seminar organised in the framework of the IRU Spring Cocktail, Brussels, 21 February 2006.

Paul Laeremans
IRU President

“HARMONISED RULES AND CONTROLS FOR INTERNATIONAL BUS AND COACH SERVICES”

Allow me to thank our speakers and moderator for their many efforts in making this seminar a success.

Special thanks should go to the representatives of the ECMT, the European Commission, the government representatives and Eurocontrol Route for their active contributions in today’s debates.

What can we conclude from today’s discussions?

“Harmonised rules and controls for international bus and coach services” is a theme which is of great concern to European bus and coach operators. Bringing it to the forefront demonstrates that the IRU is committed to contributing to the further development and facilitation of bus and coach services in Europe.

International bus and coach services, occasional as well as regular, are essential means of travel in Europe. They are safe, reliable, environmentally-friendly, efficient and affordable to a very wide range of people. However, a higher degree of recognition from national and international governmental authorities is still needed and awaited.

Today, we have heard that, since the creation of the European Single Market in 1992, the European Commission has made efforts to harmonise the rules which either directly or indirectly apply to international bus and coach services.

Despite these efforts, buses and coaches still face barriers which impede the efficiency and quality of service. Different applications and interpretations of European Regulations and Directives and multiple market access regimes with different formalities and control documents still hamper operations. The EU external borders moved further East but the problem of excessive waiting times at these borders remains unresolved to this day. Security related controls are increasing and vehicles and passengers are not only checked at borders but also inside the territory of the European Union. Transport operators are burdened with enforcement and control tasks for which they are not legally competent.

To remedy this situation, top priority must be given to a change in the political perception of our industry’s activities. The role of collective passenger transport should be recognised and it should be facilitated rather than penalised by a corresponding adaptation of legislation. A strict, transparent regulatory framework, applied in a harmonised way in all countries across Europe, is necessary to help achieve this goal.

It has been indicated that transport operators need too many different control documents on board the vehicle. Currently, operators established in the EU and offering international regular services have to operate in three different regulatory regimes depending on their destination. We have the market access rules for the European Union, the Interbus Agreement on occasional services and the bilateral agreements, each with a different degree of liberalisation. The number of regulatory regimes should be reduced and the level of liberalisation should be harmonised. This will open the door for a simplification and harmonisation of the different control documents leading to one single model of international regular service authorisation and one journey form.

The Community licence could also be much improved by reducing the flexibility allowed to the EU Member States to produce the certified true copies. The current system has led to over 100 different models. This creates an impossible situation for operators, drivers and control agencies. Information technology could be used to facilitate the handling of control documents. It should also be examined how to extend the geographical scope of the Interbus Agreement to include other potential Contracting countries in Europe, as well as to study the possibility of creating a similar multilateral agreement for international regular services by bus and coach in Europe.

Relating to technical and road safety related rules, despite the harmonisation efforts operators still face an encyclopaedia of different national rules which they have to take into account. Notable examples here are the different maximum authorised axle and total weights for touring coaches, and the wide variety of rules relating to the installation and wearing of safety belts in touring coaches. Further harmonisation and simplification is needed in this field. The IRU and its Members have developed a 20-point bus and coach safety programme in which our industry has committed itself to respect the various road safety rules for buses and coaches beyond mere legislative requirements.

The lack of harmonisation and transparency in implementation and enforcement has also been demonstrated recently in the dossier of the digital tachograph. Operators, vehicle and component manufacturers as well as controllers have been asking many questions about the entry into force of the new tachograph. The uncoordinated implementation in the European Union has led to a lot of uncertainty. More transparency in the implementation process in the different Member States is necessary. Information on transposition dates in the different Member States with links to the national laws could be made readily available on the website of the EU Institutions.

Control of road transport related legislation has also been amply discussed today. Complicated rules, lengthy road-side checks, ill informed enforcement agents, divergent sanction regimes and unjustified penalties have all been addressed. More and new rules will not help in any way. Operators and enforcement agents should also familiarise themselves better with the rules.
Indeed, legal harmonisation should go hand in hand with harmonised interpretation, clarification and simplification of existing rules, which should lead to better understanding, increased compliance and improved enforcement.

The European Union does not have legal competence in the field of controls. However, this should not be a barrier to a European approach on enforcement and controls to be progressively developed in a joint public–private partnership involving the different stakeholders; i.e. control agencies, national governments, the European Commission, the ECMT and the road transport industry itself. The aim should be to try and come to a better and more justified enforcement of existing rules, whilst at the same time targeting those that commit serious and repeated infringements of rules. Special attention should be given to the control of companies operating without the required authorisations. They undercut the market for companies operating legally and can be considered a means for bringing in illegal immigrants. Better exchange of information, including between licence-issuing authorities, as well as exchange of best practices, training and awareness campaigns would certainly help. Better use of information technology could also lead to a facilitation of enforcement. The mid-term review of the White Paper provides an excellent opportunity to launch the idea of such a partnership.

This brings me to the second topic of today’s discussions. Border controls, the Schengen Agreement, difficulties to obtain visas for drivers, control of passengers’ travel documents and excessively high penalties have all been mentioned this afternoon.

In relation to border controls, it is essential that the European Commission and national governments place the issue of waiting times at borders at the top of their political agendas. International regular services should receive priority at external EU and Schengen borders in order to allow them to stick as closely to their time schedule as possible, thus improving quality and enhancing passenger rights.

The issue of visas, security and identity controls is a more sensitive problem. We all know that continuing streams of illegal immigration and security threats in Europe have increased the vigilance of police and security forces. A touring coach with 50 or more passengers also takes time to check, causing significant delays in the schedule. Once again this has a particularly negative impact on international regular services which run according to a fixed timetable.

The Schengen Agreement places the responsibility for the control of travel documents on the driver. This may facilitate the task of control authorities, but it should be noted that the driver is not legally competent to check travel documents and operational circumstances do not allow him to do so either. Drivers are also not properly trained to carry out identity checks. This is why it is important that control authorities and operators work more closely together to try to find solutions to minimise the impact of security-related controls on bus and coach journeys. Such cooperation will be clearly in the interest of the controllers, operators and passengers, and initiatives in France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have already led to some positive results.

But it has also been demonstrated that understanding and cooperation between operators and police needs to be further improved. The IRU has also elaborated voluntary security guidelines for bus and coach operators and drivers. The aim of the guidelines is to raise the awareness of operators and drivers on security issues and to improve their capability to deal with them.
Road passenger transport by bus and coach will always be a key player in the mobility chain and in promoting tourism. As such, we must also continue to search for cooperation with governments and authorities to achieve the international harmonisation of all social, fiscal and technical rules governing competition to create equal opportunities in the market for all actors, thereby increasing economic and social integration, as well as the prosperity of countries and regions.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to conclude by stressing that while we call on the governmental partners of bus and coach travel to play their just role in facilitating international regular services and coach tourism, the IRU pledges to continue to lead the way with its slogan “working together for a better future”, with a view to driving economic growth and employment through the development of mobility, trade and tourism in Europe and indeed around the world.

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