Newsletters

On 11 August, the European Commission approved an amendment to an existing Italian scheme to support the road haulage sector in the context of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The amendment was approved under the State Aid Temporary Crisis Framework.

On 4 August, the European Commission approved, under EU State aid rules, a €30 million Slovak scheme to encourage freight transport to shift from road-only to combined road-rail and road-inland waterway transport. The scheme, which will be funded through the Recovery and Resilience Facility (‘RRF'), will run until 31 December 2027.

On 3 August, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) released data for global air cargo markets showing healthy and stable performance for June 2022. Global demand, measured in cargo tonne-kilometres (CTKs), was 6.4% below June 2021 levels, whilst capacity was 6.7% above June 2021.

On 26 July, the EU Council decided to prolong by six months, until 31 January 2023, the restrictive measures and sanctions targeting specific sectors of the economy of the Russian Federation.

On 21 July, the European Commission published a public consultation on the initiative to revise the Union Customs Code, which will remain open until 14 September. The public consultation is part of a series of consultation activities on the future reform of the customs union that the Commission is currently carrying out, following the publication of the Wise Persons Group report.

Within less than a year, economic operators including freight forwarders, will need to start declaring pre-arrival security and safety data to the new the new EU customs advance cargo information system - Import Control System 2.0 (ICS2). If you want to continue to move your goods into the EU, you need to be prepared for ICS2, which is approaching quickly.

On 27 July, the European Commission amended its December 2021 proposal, under discussion by the European Parliament and the Council, to revise the TEN-T Regulation in order to reflect the impact of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, which has redefined the geopolitical landscape.

On 29 July, the European Commission launched an open public consultation on CountEmissions EU, a new initiative that shall make it easier to measure the environmental performance of different transport options. To that end, CountEmissions EU shall offer a framework for calculating transport and logistics-related door-to door greenhouse gas emissions in a consistent way, regardless of transport mode, sector or country of operation.

On 9 August, the European Commission launched a call for evidence inviting feedback on the performance of the EU legal framework which exempts liner shipping consortia from EU antitrust rules (Consortia Block Exemption Regulation or ‘CBER'). CLECAT has been calling for an early start of the review process since many months, as European businesses and other parties in the supply chain have suffered huge disruption to the movement of goods by container shipping since the Regulation was last renewed in April 2020, with many sailings being cancelled or diverted to other ports, and ports being skipped. At the same time shipping rates have more than quadrupled on many routes and continue to remain 3 to 4 times higher than in 2019.