FRANCE\\\


Aſter months of speculation, French prime minister Jean- Marc Ayrault announced what many in the industry had long been expecting - that plans to introduce the ‘Ecotaxe’ electronic truck toll across France would be postponed. The only slight surprise is that the suspension is indefinite – many people had expected him to name a new date, possibly June 2014. Ayrault said more time was for


needed discussions with


the industry and with outlying regions of the country such as Britanny that could be adversely affected. There had been widespread


speculation that the Ecotaxe, which would rely on on-board electronic boxes mounted inside truck cabs and which was due to be introduced from 1 January 2014 – following an earlier postponement from September 2013 - would be delayed again. With just two months to go before the deadline, the ministry of transport was struggling with a backlog of applications from hauliers and there was no


Issue 8 2013 - Freight Business Journal The Ecotaxe – a French farce?


indication when the electronic boxes would


be She explained: “We transport available.


However, haulage industry sources had expected a revised date, possibly to the middle of the year. With barely two months to


go before the official start date, hauliers and officialdom had seemed woefully unprepared for the new national road tax, which was being introduced by the French government allegedly to reduce the environmental impact of road freight by encouraging the use of different modes of transport. “Frankly,


it’s a big mess, says


Marie Boyer, managing director France Line. She is one of the many French and international operators that would be affected by the new system. Any hauliers using the French national network of roads were required to register their vehicles with Ecomouv, the organisation set up to collect the tax on behalf of the French government and fit a box into every registered trailer to record the number of chargeable kilometres used.


Dunkerque launches barge shuttle


Dunkerque Port in northern France has started a Nord Ports Shuttle local waterway service. Operated by a public/private partnership composed of Dunkerque-Port, Compagnie Fluviale de Transport, the Grand Lille Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Flanders Terminal, it sails twice- weekly between the Flanders Terminal at Dunkerque-Port, Lille Container Terminal and Lille Dourges Container Terminal (LDCT) delivering containers from quay to quay the following day. One of the aims of the service is


to return empty containers to the inland terminals of Lille and Dourges which are open to all logistics operators. The service is operated by the


78teu barge, the Carina and the P’tit Murene push boat. It will run two rotations a week between Dunkirk (Saturday and Wednesday), Lille and Dourges (Monday and Thursday). NPS will initially offer an annual transport capacity of some 15,000teu - 7,500teu in each direction. Rotations are scheduled to


synchronise with the calls of ocean- going mother


ships at Flanders


Terminal. A Waterway and Maritime


customs procedure has been put in place to simplify formalities and allow electronic registration of goods’ status, via the port’s AP+ computer system. Earlier, in September, intermodal


operator SNCF-Geodis said it had been given the go ahead by French Minister for Transport, Frédéric Cuvillier to launch a ‘rail motorway’ project between the nearby Port of Calais and Le Boulou near Perpignan on the Spanish border. The route should be operational by the second half of 2015 and is expected to contribute to modal shift between the UK, the Nord-Pas de Calais region and north-east Spain. The service will be operated as


a SNCF-Geodis’ VIIA rail motorway brand. Semi-trailers will be loaded onto trains by a side loading system in Calais port. An order has been placed for 105 Modhalor rail wagons. Initially there will be two trains


a day, or 37,000 semi-trailers transported per year but the aim is for over 55,000 trailers per year when the Calais Port 2015 project doubles port capacity.


freight to France every day, and speak to the truck drivers and traffic planners all the time. Although the reason for this latest postponement has been cited as the disruption in Brittany by hauliers and farmers, we have felt for a while that legislation was being rushed in. “From what we’ve seen, there


were just not enough hauliers registered on the scheme, and not enough who had actually got the boxes to make the system workable from early in the New Year.” She said that many criteria have not been set yet and too many issues not yet resolved. There has also been lobbying by several sector of industries for concessions for trailers and hauliers carrying their products, including the food industry and the construction industry. The lack of hauliers getting


registered is partly due to the complex registration process, with hauliers having to provide many different documents and it is also very lengthy, says Boyer: “Ecomouv, the company set up to handle the registration process, says that an application for registration typically takes up to six weeks to process but we know that this is not the case and it can take up to six months. They also employ staff who have not been trained properly. “Whilst the tax has not been


fully abandoned, at France Line we no longer have the Ecotaxe surcharge starting in January 2014. My gut feeling is that the earliest it will be introduced is June 2014,


but until we hear more, we’ll just continue to keep our customers aware of the changes as they happen.” In late October, many hauliers been


still hadn’t registered.


Ecomouv was still processing applications, seemingly unable to cope with the volume. Boyer added: “And if you talk


to different staff, they all seem to understand the criteria in different ways.” In late October, most French hauliers had yet to receive their


calculated by the on-board unit at the time of travel, as it monitors how far has been travelled on each taxable road using the rates per kilometre relevant to each road or region of France. The Ecotaxe will not apply to the autoroutes, but these are already tolled. But with the Ecotaxe bill issued


aſter the journey, Boyer predicted that it would cause real cash flow issues for the already beleaguered small haulier market, adding: “We have even heard of hauliers failing


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Boyer. “We specialise in full and part loads so we’ve been optimising our freight for years. It’s just not right that these changes are being brought in hastily, nor that hauliers are being asked to be tax collectors.” Prior to the postponement,


foreign hauliers with regular work in France had been encouraged to register for the Ecotaxe and fit permanent on-board units. For


occasional or one-off


visitors to France, it will be possible to hire an electronic box from an agent, for a fee and a €150 deposit, said policy manager at the Freight Transport Association, Don Armour. (Apparently, there is no need to physically install units, other than perhaps plug it into the cigar lighter.) A spokesman for telematics


on-board units which calibrate mileage and taxable road use, because of the sheer volume of hauliers who needed approving. Others were experiencing delays in installation of the on-board units, she said. There was also concern at the


lack of information on what the charges would actually be. There would have been a per-


kilometre charge for heavy goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes using the 10,500 km of French highways and around 5,000 km of secondary routes that are likely to receive significant displaced traffic. But the specific fee can only be


Pall-Ex goes XXL


Pall-Ex’s new French network has enjoyed good volumes since it opened in May, says Anand Assi, project director at the palletised freight network. Interestingly, though, there has been a greater preponderance of ‘oversize’ freight than in the UK or other countries where Pall-Ex has started operations. “We haven’t had to change our


model, though it does increase processing time at the hub somewhat,” he told FBJ. Pall-Ex operates from a central


hub at Bourges, in the geographical centre of the country. “We didn’t want to be top-heavy in Paris, where only a handful of hauliers would have found it interesting,” he explained.


At there moment, there are


around 40 members but Pall-Ex is keen to recruit more as the business develops. There is no precise final figure in mind, but 55-60 might be in the ballpark. Pall-Ex can offer a 24-hour delivery


service across France from Brest to Marseilles and 48 hours for the rest, giving an overnight service for all the main centres of population and industry. As with the other Pall-Ex networks, it is handling a wide range of traffics including aerospace and chemicals. There is also some international


traffic to and from France, although domestic business will be the initial focus as the network builds up.


the registration requirements because of insufficient funds in the bank.” Hauliers will be expected to


pay the Ecotaxe at the end of each month, but if their customers take 60 days or more to pay them, they could experience serious cash- flow problems. “We’re all in favour of the


government encouraging a reduction in empty running, and collaborative logistics,” explained


company Masternaut, which is very active in France, added that the Ecotaxe, if and when it is introduced, would logically have an impact, or even provoke an entire review of fleet vehicles typology. “We should observe less than 3.5 tonne vehicles on the roads therefore decreasing traffic congestion and benefiting lighter vehicles. Companies in France tend to know about the geolocalisation aspects but not necessarily the benefits of telematics. Ecotaxe is a legal obligation so they must be equipped with embedded systems to comply with the tax.”


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