Report on the implementation of Regulation (EEC) No 3118/93 laying down the conditions under which non- resident carriers may operate national road haulage services within a Member State (Cabotage) - Main contents

COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES

Brussels, 04.02.1998 COM(1998) 47 final

REPORT

on the implementation of Regulation (EEC) N° 3118/93 laying down the conditions under which non-resident carriers may operate national road haulage services within a Member State (CABOTAGE)

(presented by the Commission)

REPORT on the implementation of Regulation (EEC) N° 3118/93 laying down the conditions under which non-resident carriers may operate national road haulage services within a Member State (CABOTAGE)

• 0. 

  Introduction

0.1. Cabotage, that is national transport by non-resident hauliers, is a relatively recent phenomena despite being specifically mentioned in Article 75.1 (b) of the Treaty of Rome. Cabotage authorizations were introduced as from 1 July 1990 under Council Regulation (EEC) N° 4059/89 of 21 December 1989¹. The initial quota, for the period 1 July 1990 to 30 June 1991, was 15 000 authorizations with each authorization valid for 2 months; however, Member States could ask for the 2-month authorizations to be exchanged for twice as many 1 -month authorizations. Each authorization permitted the haulier to carry out cabotage in one (or several) other Member States during the 2-month (or 1-month) period. The authorization must accompany the tractive unit during cabotage operations; it can be transferred between different vehicles belonging to the same haulier since the authorization only indicates the name of the haulier not the registration plate.

0.2. Regulation 4059/89 also included a provision for an annual increase of 15% in the size of the quota; an additional increase in the quota was made in 1991 to accomodate the incorporation of the former German Democratic Republic into Germany (Council Regulation (EEC) N° 296/91 of 4 February 1991)².

0.3. Under Council Regulation (EEC) N° 3118/93 of 25 October 1993³, the cabotage quota was increased to 30 000 authorizations for 1994, the annual increase of the quota was raised to 30% and, more importantly, it was agreed to abolish quotas as from 1 July 1998 (see Article 12.2 (ibid)). It should also be noted that cabotage quotas have already been abolished between the 3 Benelux countries (actually, this was done at the end of 1992) pursuant to Article 233 of the Treaty of Rome.

0.4. The scope of the cabotage regime was extended to the Efta States with the creation of the European Economic Area (EEA)³. The relevant legislation for cabotage, which excluded Austria, came into force on 1 July 1994 (EEA Joint Committee Decision N° 7/94 of 21 March 1994)⁴. Under this legislation, Community hauliers and hauliers from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden could carry out cabotage in any EEA State (except Austria). The geographical scope of the cabotage regime remained unchanged when Finland and Sweden joined the European Community on 1 January 1995 as Protocol N° 9 to the Accession Treaty⁵, only brought Austria into the cabotage regime on 1 January 1997-Finally it should be noted that Liechtenstein joined the cabotage regime on adhesion to the EEA on 1 May 1995 (EEA Joint Committee Decision N° 1/95 of 10 March 95)⁶.

0.5. Regulation 3118/93 forsees, in Article 1, paragraph 4, that the Commission should adopt the detailed rules regarding “own account”; this was done through Commission Regulation (EC) N° 792/94⁷, it should be noted, however, that the number of cabotage authorizations remained unchanged. As the use of cabotage authorizations by “own account” operators has been quite small, the “penetration rate of cabotage” has been calculated throughout the period 1990 to 1995 by dividing the “cabotage activity" by the “national transport activity” for just the “hire or reward” operators.

0.6. This report has four sections; the first section discusses the statistics to be supplied by national authorities and the data actually delivered; the second section is devoted to an analysis of the cabotage statistics up from mid-1990 to the end of 1995 (so as to have an adequate time series to show the development of the use of the cabotage authorizations); the third section forecasts the main cabotage statistics to mid-1998; the fourth section presents the conclusions.

0.7. This report-is prepared by virtue of Article 11 of Regulation 3118/93, which requires the Commission to submit a report to the Council on the application of this Regulation every two years. For the sake of completeness and comparability it starts in mid-1990 and is based, for the period from mid-1990 to the end of 1994, on data relating to the .12 Member States and, for the period after 1.1.1995, on data relating to the 15 Member States (except Austria). The Commission considers it useful, in the same report, to consider the application of Regulation 3118/93 also in the framework of the EEA Agreement; thus the report also includes data relating to Finland and Sweden (for the second half of 1994) and Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway (for the second half of 1994 and the whole of 1995). A copy will thus be sent for information to the EEA Council as under the EEA Agreement it is for the EFT A Standing Committee to make its own assessment concerning the EFTA States.

• 1. 

  Statistics supplied bv national authorities

1.1.    Under Regulation 4059/89, each reporting Member State was required to supply data on “days”, “tonnes” and “tonne-kilometres” relating to cabotage movements performed by their own hauliers on a quarterly basis with separate data for each (other) Member State where the cabotage was carried out; these requirements apply to the period 1 July 1990 to 31 December 1993.

1.2.    Under Regulation 3118/93, Member States were no longer required to supply data on “days”; information on “tonnes” and “tonne-kilometres” was however still required to be supplied in the same way as previously (see §1.1). From 1 July 1994, Member States also have to supply information on cabotage carried out in the Efta States; likewise the Efta States have to supply similar data on cabotage. Data reporting requirements relating to Austria only apply as from 1 January 1997.

1.3 To avoid confusion, the order of countries in which the data was to be supplied was established, for statistical reasons, as follows: Germany (D), France (F), Italy (I), Netherlands (NL), Belgium (B), Luxembourg (L), United Kingdom (UK), Ireland (IRL), Denmark (DK), Greece (GR), Spain (E), Portugal (P), Iceland (IS), Norway (N), Finland (FIN), Sweden (S), Liechtenstein (FL), Austria (A). The beginning of the list corresponds to the original 12 Member States when Regulation 3118/93 came into force, which is in the same order as the “standard order” adopted by EUROSTAT in its publications relating to the “Road Statistics Directive”, extracts of which are needed in the analyses that follow. The last part of the list corresponds to the countries in the order in which they joined the cabotage regime.

1.4.    The Commission’s Services have extensively analysed the quarterly data on tkm (tonne-kilometres) from the third quarter of 1990 to the fourth quarter of 1995 (and have also briefly examined the quarterly data for 1996 that has already arrived; however, the 1996 data is still far from being complete). While the data on “tonnes” has also been examined, it is not included in this report for the reasons set out in the Report to the Council on the use of 1990/91 road cabotage authorizations (submitted as part of COM(91) 377 final of 22 November 1991)⁸.

1.5.    The data supplied by the reporting states for the period third quarter of 1990 to fourth quarter of 1995 is complete except as follows:

Italy:    third quarter 1990 to third quarter 1992 inclusive;

Italy:    third and fourth quarters 1995;

Denmark:    all quarters 1994

The missing data, but just the data for tkm, has been estimated; estimated values are generally shown in the tables of this report in italics (note also that forecast values in the tables of this report are shown in bold). This rule is not followed in those tables obtained directly from computer output (Tables 1, 7 and 8).

1.6.    No quarterly data is presented in this report as there are now 22 quarterly periods from the time cabotage was introduced up till the end of 1995; in this report data has been grouped, at least into half year periods and, frequently, on an annual basis.

1.7.    This report also makes use of tkm data on national transport by “hire or reward” hauliers from the “Road Statisics Directive” (Council Directive 78/546/EEC of 12 June 1978^{9 10} as modified by Council Directive 89/462/EEC of 18 July 1989)*¹ in order to calculate “penetration rates” for “cabotage” expressed as a % of the corresponding “national transport”. The national transport data presented in this report has been taken, where possible, from the information supplied to EUROSTAT by the national statistical authorities; however, it has been necessary to (a) add data from other sources for the “Efta States”, (b) adjust data where the time series appear inconsistent (e.g. to estimate backwards to take account of the major upward revision of the German data), (c) adjust data where under-reporting has been quantified by the national authorities (e.g. 30% has been added to the French data) and (d) estimate recent data where this has not yet been supplied to EUROSTAT.

• 2. 

  Main results relating.....to Cabotage Statistics. 2nd half 1990 to 2nd half 1995

inclusive

Unless otherwise stated, the results in this section of the Report refer to the whole period (2nd half 1990 to 2nd half 1995 inclusive) and are expressed in tonne-kilometres (tkm); references to the “1st period” mean “2nd half 1990 to 1st half 1994 inclusive” when the cabotage system only covered EU12; while references to the “2nd period” mean “2nd half 1994 to 2nd half 1995 inclusive” when the cabotage system was extended to the Efta States. The main results are:

2.1.    From a low initial level in the 2nd half 1990 of 176 million (mio) tkm (352 mio tkm on an annual basis), cabotage increased almost 5-fold to 1 677 mio tkm in 1995. The average penetration rate of cabotage in national (hire or reward) markets thus increased from 0.07% (2nd half 1990) to 0.26% (1995).

2.2.    The average use of a (2-month) authorization rose from 23 000 tkm (2nd half 1990) to 48 000 tkm (1993), but has since fallen to 35 000 tkm (1994 and 1995); the average use over the whole period was 38 000 tkm.

2.3.    The hauliers from the Benelux have been the most active in the cabotage market; despite having only approximately 25% of the cabotage authorizations, almost 60% of all cabotage was done by Benelux hauliers. Dutch and Belgian hauliers average use of cabotage authorizations was about 95 000 tkm (2 1/2 times the overall average), while for Luxembourg hauliers the average use was 74 000 tkm. In the 2nd period, 35% of all cabotage was done by Dutch hauliers, and the average use surpassed 100 000 tkm. (It should however be noted that hauliers from “geographically small” countries have more incentive to do cabotage not only because their own national markets are so small but also because other national markets are frequently “geographically quite close”. In contrast hauliers from “large” countries have little incentive to carry out cabotage in “small” countries even if they are “geographically quite close”.)

2.4 Other “active” hauliers in the cabotage market were from France (13% of the market and average use of 46 000 tkm), Denmark (7% and 34 000 tkm), and United Kingdom (4% and 20 000 tkm). Hauliers from “newcomer” Sweden (with 7%) exceeded the shares of Denmark and United Kingdom in the 2nd period, the corresponding average use of 55 000 tkm only being surpassed by hauliers from the Benelux.

2.5    Despite the relatively large number of authorizations allocated to Germany and Italy (14% and 11% respectively) their hauliers were not very active in the cabotage markets achieving only 6% and 4% respectively of the market. These results were also reflected in low average uses of only 17 000 and 13 500 tkm respectively; in the 2nd period, the German average use fell to 11 000.

2.6    Only 2% of the cabotage was carried out by hauliers from “low labour cost” countries (Greece, Portugal, Spain), despite the fact that hauliers from these 3 countries were allocated some 18% of the cabotage authorizations. Average use of authorizations by Greek, Portuguese and Spanish hauliers have only been 40 tkm, 3 350 tkm and 8 000 tkm respectively. Fears that hauliers from “low labour cost” countries would provide “unfair” competition for hauliers in “high labour cost” countries thus appear to be unfounded.

2.7.    Almost 70% of the cabotage was carried out in Germany, the proportion having risen from 64% (1st period) to 73% (2nd period); the penetration rate (of the German national (hire or reward) market) has risen from almost 0.2% (2nd half of 1990) to over 0.8% (1995).

2.8.    12% of the cabotage was carried out in France, while the proportion carried out in Italy has fallen from 12% (1st period) to 5% (2nd period).

2.9 Only about 10% of the cabotage was carried out in the remaining states, in 1995. The lowest penetration rates recorded (ignoring Iceland and Liechtenstein where no cabotage has yet been observed) were 0.007% (Finland), 0.03% (Denmark) and 0.04% (Netherlands and United Kingdom).

2.10.    In the 1st period, 5 of the 12 countries had a negative ‘balance’ of cabotage These were, in mio tkm, Germany (-1643)¹¹, Italy (-220), Spain (-32), Portugal (-17) and Greece (-6); however the negative balances for Italy and Greece must be taken with caution due to the large number of estimates for Italian hauliers and the virtual ‘nil’ reporting for the Greek hauliers.

2.11.    In the 2nd period, 6 of the 17 countries had a negative balance; these were, in mio tkm, Germany (-1595; i.e. 91-1686), Italy (-44), Spain (-33), Greece (-9), Norway (-4) and Portugal (-3); however it can be seen that only Germany has a substantial negative balance.

2.12. The largest quantity of cabotage carried out by hauliers from one specific state in another specific state was by Dutch hauliers in Germany during both the 1st period (554 out of 2951 mio tkm, i.e. 19% of all cabotage by all hauliers in all states) and the 2nd period (718 out of 2319 mio tkm, i.e. 31%), the “runner up” in both periods was cabotage by Belgian hauliers in Germany (400 mio tkm (i.e. 14%) during the 1st period and 266 mio tkm (i.e. 11%) during the 2nd period).

• 3. 

  Forecasts of cabotage use from 1996 to 1998 (1st half!

These forecasts only relate to tkm; they are based on an extrapolation of the observed values of “average use of cabotage authorizations” for each reporting state (including 1996 where already communicated by the state concerned, as shown in Table 4) which are generally declining; estimates are thus made for the remaining states for 1996 and for all states for 1997 and 1998 (1st half). These “average use” estimates are then multiplied by the number of (2-month) cabotage authorizations allocated to each state in the period concerned to provide the forecast of total cabotage use for each reporting state. Note that in carrying out this procedure, it was necessary to infer an “average use” for Austrian hauliers, as there are, as yet, no observed values of cabotage statistics for Austrian hauliers. The main results are:

3.1 Cabotage can be expected to rise from 1677 mio tkm in 1995 to an estimate of 2000 mio tkm in 1996¹² and to forecasts of 2466 mio tkm in 1997 and 1417 mio tkm in the 1st half of 1998 (2834 mio tkm on an annual basis which is a rise of 70% on 1995). The average penetration rate of cabotage in national (hire or reward) markets can be expected to rise from 0.26% in 1995 to a forecasted 0.45% in the 1st half of 1998.

3.2.    The forecasts show that the hauliers from the Benelux will continue to dominate the cabotage market, with an estimated 60% of all cabotage in the 1st half of 1998; Dutch hauliers alone are expected to perform over 35% of all cabotage in the 1st half of 1998.

3.3.    Although no direct forecast has been made concerning “where the cabotage will be carried out”; the proportion of cabotage carried out in Germany can be expected to be 70-75% of all cabotage and would thus be about 1000 mio tkm in the 1st half of 1998 (about 2000 mio tkm on an annual basis); it would then be expected to be about 1.3% of the German national (hire or reward) market.

3.4 The largest quantity of cabotage carried out by hauliers from one specific state in another specific state will almost certainly continue to be by Dutch hauliers in Germany; this is expected to be about 33 % of all cabotage by all hauliers in all states in the first half of 1998, i.e. 470 mio tkm (940 mio tkm on an annual basis); it would then be expected to be about 0.6% of the German national (hire or reward) market.

• 4. 

  Conclusions

4.1    Although the number of cabotage authorizations has been raised considerably, the overall influence on the market is very small.

4.2    This situation is not expected to change abruptly following the abolition of cabotage quotas in mid-1998.

4.3    The most successful cabotage hauliers are not those from Member States with low labour costs, but those of Member States with very efficient enterprises.

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1000 TKM Cabotage statistics

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