The European Union’s Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc has called for a standardised EU-wide road pricing system.
Her remarks, reported in German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, come as Germany plans to introduce a controversial road toll in 2016 aimed at foreign drivers using Germany’s Autobahn routes. German drivers would also be subject to the proposed toll, but they would be able to offset it against other domestic taxes. Germany’s government and the EU are in dispute over the German toll proposals.
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Violeta Bulc told Welt am Sonntag that there are many different systems in Europe at the moment and this was a burden on car drivers and an obstacle to their mobility. It would make sense, in the medium term, she said, to work on a European system for lorries and cars that could regulate road charges in a uniform manner for all EU countries.
“The amount of the fee should, in my opinion, be exclusively based on the number of kilometres actually driven and should not be time-dependent,” she was quoted as saying.
“It doesn’t matter where you come from – everyone will only pay for the distance they have actually driven and it will be billed on a device throughout Europe. We’re currently investigating just such an idea.”
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