Lithuania along with Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Cyprus and Malta voted against the provisions of the Mobility Package, but these votes were insufficient to block the ambiguously perceived legal acts. Belgium abstained from voting.
Lithuania and other like-minded countries have also made joint reasoned statements regarding their vote against the Mobility Package that runs counter to the EU’s climate ambition and leads to the fragmentation of the single market.
“Crisis-struck Europe needs an updated, solidarity-based solution in the sphere of transport. We can see the vital importance of the road transport sector today. Under the circumstances, the adoption of the Mobility Package was neither justified nor at all appropriate. Bearing in mind its current content and scope, the package will very likely have a further negative impact on the EU’s transport sector and on carriers in many EU member states, not just Lithuania. I hope that the European Parliament will also have an important say on the ongoing adoption of the package. Its members should carefully and exhaustively reevaluate the situation in which the EU carriers will find themselves after the ratification of the package," said the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Linas Linkevičius, who raised this issue also during the last video conference of the EU Foreign Affairs Ministers at the end of March.
Although the Council of the European Union adopted the Mobility Package, it has yet to be ratified by the European Parliament.
Most of the provisions of the Mobility Package, with the exception of the rules in the driving times regulation, will become applicable 18 months after the entry into force of the legal acts, unless the European Parliament decides otherwise.
The Mobility Package consists of a regulation governing access to the road haulage market and to the profession of road haulage operator or road passenger transport operator; a regulation on maximum work and minimum rest times for drivers and positioning by means of tachographs; and a directive revising enforcement requirements and laying down rules on posting of drivers.
The European Commission is committed to carrying out an impact assessment of the provisions of the Mobility Package, which oblige to return the vehicle to the country of registration at least every 8 weeks. Lithuania and other countries, which spoke out against the adoption of the Mobility Package, expect that the impact assessment will be carried out as soon as possible, well ahead of the entry into force of the legal acts, and that the Mobility Package will be further revised.
