EU legislation covering bus, coach and road freight transport is vast, but poorly enforced. In recent years EU member states have cut up to 75% of their enforcement capacity as part of national austerity programmes.

What is more, road transport is a cross-border activity and that means that cross-border enforcement is key. In the past decade, EU Member States had to invest over €22 million in creating and inter-connecting national databases that include information and compliance records from road operators.

This money could be better spend on upgrading these systems, but that is far from the case. “Smart” enforcement – the use of modern technology to track the application of road transport rules – is not yet with us. In fact, fax machines are still the primary means of communication between companies and enforcement authorities.

Paper-based records are expensive, old-fashioned and make it easy to avoid enforcement. That is why the ETF Road Transport Section published a set of concrete proposals on how to step up law enforcement and make the road transport sector a modern champion of Fair Transport.