Regulations against Polish carriers performing international road transport of goods

Abstract

Nowadays, in the European Union, in practically all fields of economy, including road transport, there are certain difficulties in free exercise of service activity in international transport. These difficulties are expressed by creating barriers of entry to a market or existing in that market by entities from other countries and they arise as a result of legal actions or administrative actions which interfere with legal provisions and therefore act in the interest of their own economy. The profitability of both Polish and foreign carriers which extended their activities to Western Europe is based on lower production costs, which can be achieved through lower maintenance costs of vehicles and lower working costs. The process of creating barriers of entry for the highly competitive entities in the EU results in market uncertainty, whose effect may be increased risk of providing transport services and which limits the transport potential of numerous companies. It is currently very difficult to find an agreement between the so-called “old EU” and the Visegrad Group in the area of transport. The key subject is solving the issue of posted workers. The most controversies regard the issue of whether the provisions of the new directive will also concern the workers from the transport sector. A few states, e.g. France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain wants the sector to be permanently included in the directive. Poland (posts the most workers) and other EU member states which undertake transport operations in the EU oppose these provisions.