Euro Truckers Get Swiss Tansit Rights - At a Price

PARIS — The European Union’s Ministers of Transport Committee, meeting in Brussels Dec. 1, accepted a deal that allows EU-registered trucks transit rights through Switzerland, but at a very high price for road transport.

The transit accord, which has held up an overall trade agreement between the EU and Switzerland for nearly seven years, sets a quota of 250,000 trucks that may use Swiss highways in 2000. The quota gradually increases each year until 2005, when all restrictions end.

But the trucks using Swiss highways will have to pay an average of $232 for the 186-mile trip across the Alpine country.

“That is 15 times what trucks pay to use the autobahns,” says Karlheinz Schmidt, head of the German trucking association, the BDL. “This is a disaster for jobs in Germany. Trucking companies cannot pay this.”

The International Road Transport Union in Geneva said the costs of the agreement “cannot be assumed by fleet operators but will be fully paid by their customers and the economy, penalizing European competitiveness and employment.”

Because of Switzerland’s strategic continental location, reaching a transit agreement has been a major goal for the EU since Swiss voters rejected EU membership in a 1992 referendum. The country is surrounded by EU members Austria, Germany, France and Italy and provides the most direct north-south routes through the Alps.

According to Mr. Schmidt, the EU wanted an overall trade agreement so badly that it accepted a bad deal for the road transport industry.

“This is a big political agreement, and transportation has a low profile with the politicians,” he said. “They don’t care how many trucks use the highways or how much it costs.”

At the Brussels meeting, the EU ministers also made changes to the so-called Eurovignette system of road pricing. The committee agreed unanimously to allow governments to raise or lower charges based on the environmental or infrastructure damage done by a truck.

Starting next July 1, national governments may charge a maximum of $1,077 a year for trucks equipped with Euro II engines, so-called because they meet emissions standards, and $1,206 for older models. Non-EU trucks will be charged $1,293 for a one-year sticker.

The countries using the Eurovignette system are Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Other countries, such as France, Italy and Spain, rely on highway tolls. The Eurovignette, like the tolls, is paid by all truckers using the highways in the six countries, usually with daily, weekly or monthly permits.

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