Express operators offer more than simple transportation services. They are “integrators” that help boost the efficiency of supply chains across Europe. Such increased efficiency creates both environmental and cost benefits.

Express companies use a variety of transport modes such as trucks, vans, passenger and freight aircraft, bicycles or on-foot delivery. Express companies are also participating in pilot projects looking into the potential use of rail in express networks.

In Europe, public policy has a key role to play in this process. Shaping a transport policy environment that cuts across disparate national rules and allows for the most efficient express operations should be the singular objective for Europe’s relevant policy-makers. In this regard, the completion of the European internal market for transport, through the realisation of the Single European Sky and the creation of a fully competitive and liberalised land transport market, must be a key priority for the European Union.

The EEA Transport & Environment Committee (TEC) focuses on a number of policy issues cutting across the transport and environment space and spanning the different transport modes.

A number of key issues are of ongoing importance for the TEC. For road transport, cabotage liberalization, the harmonized implementation of the driving and resting periods as well as further developments of European Modular System would increase significantly the environmental and business efficiency of the logistics and express sectors. On the social dimensions of transport, the TEC is of the opinion that a correct and harmonized implementation of the existing rules is essential and that vehicles below 3.5 tons should be excluded from this type of legislation as their main activity is not driving, but rather delivery to final customers.

Express operators are genuinely multi-modal. Therefore, the TEC fully supports policy initiatives aiming to encourage effective and realistic co-modality between transport modes.

The European Commission’s vision for the Future of European Transport Policy for the next ten years should therefore be based on truly integrated modal networks that are able to deliver results in terms of sustainability and competitiveness, putting the transport sector at the centre of Europe’s 2020 Strategy.