Eca –
There is still a long way to go for intermodal freight transport in the EU: at the moment, trains and barges do not compete on equal terms with lorries and lorries, according to a report published today by the European Court of Auditors. Despite efforts to reduce road freight transport, regulatory and infrastructure barriers affecting other modes of transport remain. These are issues that the EU must address if it is to achieve its green ambitions.
Road transport is the most flexible way of delivering goods, as well as often being the fastest and cheapest: it is no coincidence that 75% of goods transport in the EU takes place by road. Trucks, however, are big polluters. Relieving roads and making more use of other modes of transport, such as rail or inland waterways, can play an important role in greening freight transport. For this change to happen, between 2014 and 2020 the EU has provided over €1.1 billion in support of intermodality projects.
“The decarbonisation of transport is at the heart of the EU’s objective to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as set out in the European Green Deal,” said Annemie Turtelboom, the ECA Member responsible for the audit. “Although intermodality is a key tool in that effort, freight is not on track.”
The European Court of Auditors has noted the lack of a specific EU strategy for the intermodal transport of goods. Rather, intermodality is part of broader strategies for the greening of freight transport, which define specific targets regarding the increased use of rail and inland waterways. However, since these are non-binding values, EU countries are free to set their own, which are not necessarily comparable and aligned with EU objectives. It is therefore not possible to assess whether joint national efforts are sufficient to achieve the overall EU objectives on modal shift. However, the targets set by the EU for 2030 and 2050 (ultimately doubling rail traffic and increasing the use of inland waterways by 50 %) are simply unrealistic, we say.
In addition, according to the Court, some EU rules harm the attractiveness of intermodal transport. The current version of the Combined Transport Directive is obsolete (dating from 1992) and ineffective. For example, it requires a paper document stamped by the railway or port authorities throughout the journey, instead of a digitized workflow. Various attempts to revise the directive by the European Commission have not found the favorable opinion of the member states. At the same time, other regulatory provisions, in particular those governing road transport, sometimes contravene the objective of encouraging intermodality. Capacity management and interoperability will likely remain problematic in the absence of new legislative action (concerning, for example, slot scheduling for rail freight or priority rules for passenger over freight trains, or language requirements for train drivers).
The European Court of Auditors also points to the delays accumulated by EU countries in bringing infrastructure into compliance with the technical requirements established by EU legislation. For example, in an effort to compete with road transport, using longer trains that reach the European standard length of 740 meters could be one of the most cost-effective improvements. The problem is, however, that these trains can in theory only be used on half of the core corridors of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). Furthermore, the lack of information on the capabilities of the intermodal network and terminals prevents shippers and logistic operators from offering good intermodal transport solutions to their customers. The proposed revision of the TEN-T regulation can improve the situation. But as it stands, concludes the European Court of Auditors, the EU freight network is simply not yet suitable for intermodality.
Intermodal freight transport consists of transporting goods in a single load unit (such as a container or semi-trailer), without separate handling and by combining several modes of transport: road, rail, inland waterway or air. Intermodality therefore exploits the intrinsic strengths of the different modes of transport.
The main legal act concerning the European road, rail, inland waterway, maritime and air transport network of passengers and goods is the regulation on the trans-European transport network (TEN-T), the current version of which was adopted in 2013. Other relevant pieces of legislation are the 1992 Combined Transport Directive, which is the only piece of EU legislation specific to intermodal transport.
With the countries selected for this audit, three key trade flows overlapping sections of the TEN-T corridors were covered: the Rhine-Alps corridor (extending from Belgium and the Netherlands to Italy), the Sea North-Baltic (between Poland and Germany) and the Atlantic and Mediterranean corridors (connecting Germany to Spain via France).
Special report 08/2023, “Intermodal freight transport – The EU has a long way to go towards reducing road freight transport”, is available on the Court’s website.
