A strict no to the Weights and Dimensions Directive amendment

Changes in 2015 and in 2019 to the Weights and Dimensions Directive (WDD) did not deliver amidst the COVID pandemic, an energy crisis and the war in Ukraine. Perhaps more time would have been needed, yet the Commission produced another set of WDD amendments just 4 years after the last changes to the Directive. The proposed WDD amendments create again uncertainty while offering regulated competitiveness to road.

The proposed amendments – if left unchanged – will do nothing more than protect the road sector’s present market position. The measures offered with the pretext of promoting intermodal freight transportation are again ineffective and inadequate. The best solution would be withdrawing the amendment proposal. If that does not happen, UIRR with all its members will propose a series of amendments to neutralise some of the worst expected damages at both European and Member State level.

The most important 3 amendments:

Additional amendments of a technical nature or motivated by fairness and equality will be proposed later, while amendments will also be suggested to the proposed new CountEmissionEU Regulation and to the proposed amendment of the Combined Transport Directive (CTD) with the motivation of correcting some of the excesses of the WDD amendment. The 3 legislative proposals of WDD, CountEmissionEU and the CTD therefore belong together and should be addressed together in a package approach.

Read further and download the full position paper as PDF below: