The Governing Council of the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria, based on the fact that the largest transport associations - the Bulgarian Association of Road Transport Associations /BASAT/ and the Union of International Carriers /SMP/ - are its members, supports the upcoming protest of the representatives of the transport industry against the mobility package and shares their view that the new regulation is inappropriate and unfair.
The protest will take place in Brussels during the upcoming meeting of the Transport Committee of the European Parliament, since the positions of the 3 Eastern European countries and Malta on the measures of the "Mobility" package were not taken into account at the Council of Ministers on December 2018, 8.
The package of changes in the EU regulations for freight transport envisages extremely heavy restrictions regarding the transport sector in individual member states and dooms Bulgarian international transport to bankruptcy.
In reality, threatened with destruction is a sector that forms 17% of the GDP of the country, provides employment to over 120 thousand people and brings in about 13-14 billion BGN per year.
The proposal of the European Council that every four weeks the drivers go home to the countries where the company is registered, for whatever reasons it was dictated, will in practice limit the access of the Bulgarian transport operators to the European market.
Drivers will be forced to return to areas remote from European destinations at their own expense. This, in turn, will lead to bankruptcies and out of business for small family businesses.
Under the noble motive that the proposed mobility package is in the context of protecting the rights of the employed, their better pay and the right to rest, in reality it represents a restriction of their civil rights. First of all – freedom of movement – through the determination of mandatory residence during certain periods of time. This, in turn, implies tracking citizens and controlling their social life. The intended ban on overnight stays in vehicles deprives people of their right to choose to plan and carry out their recreation according to their needs. Separately, the fact that there are no guarded parking lots where the vehicle can "wait" for the driver to return from his mandatory rest at home is not taken into account. This, in turn, will lead to the aimless journey of hundreds of thousands of trucks throughout Europe.
Ultimately, all these regulations will deprive those employed in the industry of the opportunity to practice their profession.
These, as well as the other envisaged measures, which are highly discriminatory towards Bulgarian carriers, in contrast to the envisaged privileges for carriers from developed European countries, put the transport sector and the country of Bulgaria itself at a disadvantage compared to the other member states. This is a violation of the rights and legitimate interests of individual members of the community, limiting their right to work and equal access of economic operators in the sector to the single European market.
January 9, 2019
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