Newsletters

On 24 February, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) published a Conflict Zone Information Bulletin (CZIB) with respect to Ukraine, which is now an active conflict area. To date, the CZIB has been updated twice since its publication.

On 24 February, the Council of the European Union extended until 30 June 2022 the emergency measures put in place in October 2020 to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on the railway sector. The measures give Member States the possibility to provide relief from certain infrastructure charges for rail companies while ensuring a timely refund for infrastructure providers.

On 21 February, the European Railway Summit, organised by SNCF, took place in the framework of the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union, entitled “Rail, the Driver for Greener and More Innovative Transport”. This high-level conference brought together European and national policy makers, as well as representatives of the rail sector, to identify courses of action and concrete commitments around three key topics: decarbonisation, digitalisation & innovation, as well as the financing of the rail system.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published on 15 February a report on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for the performance of commercial contracts for the carriage of goods by sea, and multimodal contracts of carriage that (may) involve carriage by sea. The report seeks to assist commercial parties to better understand some of the key legal issues arising from the pandemic and provide them recommendations, as well as related considerations for policymakers.

On 21 February, nine MEPs from the TRAN Committee sent an open letter to the European Commission with the request to report without further delay on the current status of the transposition of the new rules of the first Mobility Package. MEPs welcomed the Commission guidelines on the new road transport rules for member states and operators, but expressed disappointment on the fact that a large number of Member States are not yet in a position to correctly transpose the Directive 2020/1057 on posting of drivers.

On 21 February, CLECAT, together with the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER), the Alliance of Passenger Rail New Entrants in Europe (ALLRAIL), the European Passenger Federation (EPF), Erasmus by Train e.V. (EbT) and the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF), met in Paris to formally close the European Year of Rail, on the occasion of the European Railway Summit organised within the framework of the French Presidency of the Council of the EU.

The French Presidency of the Council of the EU organised on 21 and 22 February an informal meeting of transport ministers in Le Bourget (France). Presided by Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, French Minister for Transport, participants exchanged views on three main priorities: decarbonisation, innovation and social regulation.

CLECAT has called on the European Commission to put the container shipping market under close scrutiny as the industry enters the third year of its Block Exemption from normal competition rules whilst services are at record low levels and rates continue to beyond reach for many of the clients of the forwarders, particularly SMEs. In the light of the recent market developments and the new vertical integration strategy of the Global Alliances, the Commission urgently must take the necessary steps to initiate a sector inquiry, so that it can use the results in its forthcoming review of the CBER.

On 14 February, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) and the Computer Emergency Response Team for the EU Institutions, bodies and agencies (CERT-EU) published a joint set of cybersecurity best practices for public and private organisations in the EU.