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New EU Proposal to Affect Truck Drivers

Published: 09 June 2017

A new proposal from the EU has been presented, which is designed to prevent truck drivers from lower-wage countries from undercutting higher paid workers when they travel to other EU countries. The new rules propose that truck drivers can travel outside their home country for three days and still be paid under their home country’s rules. After the third day, they will be under the wage rules of the country where they are delivering the goods.

Another part of the proposal is that employers will need to pay for accommodations for their drivers to take long weekend breaks, as they will be no longer allowed to spend them in their trucks. Belgian officials have seen this part of the proposal as the green light to enforce penalties on hauliers that are not complying with this rule, which is already Belgian law.

If the Commission had gone with a longer period of five, seven or nine days before the posting of workers directive applies to drivers, that would mean that truckers could deliver goods at lower pay for an even longer time—exactly what France, Germany and Austria have tried to stop. The three-day limit gives those countries a better break than they were expecting.

Another controversial change in the proposal is the lifting of any limit on cabotage, or the number different delivery trips drivers can make, within their first five days abroad. Current EU cabotage law restricts drivers to making only three runs during a seven-day trip.

Germany, followed by France, host the highest number of cabotage operations, according to 2014 Eurostat data. Poland supplies the largest amount of cargo delivered on those cabotage operations by volume.

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