 like to welcome you wholeheartedly to this conference on the improvement of rail transport for freight in the European Union, making rail transport attractive in the EU and globally. It is being organised by the left group of the European Parliament, the left and the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation in Brussels. One technical information for you, all the presentations will be recorded today and afterwards they will be uploaded but the discussion however will not be recorded so you can rest assured that we can openly discuss anything we want to discuss. You will find the interpretation into English, German and Czech and you will have to click on the globe icon and the lower right-hand frame of your zoom window and we hope that you can hear us well. As I said before there will be report on the conference afterwards and I will be sending it out to everyone who's interested in order to keep up with the report. What are we going to talk about? We will be talking about the question of how rail transport can be made more attractive. It's a follow-up conference to a conference that we organised at the start of the year. 2021 was declared as the European Year of the Rail and we would like to take stock on the present situation, how to improve and promote further rail transport. What are the results that we can see already from the European Year of the Rail and we would also like to put that into relation with the road transport and the freight transport more particularly on the road. Let me introduce first of all our panellists. Conia Ernst will be holding a keynote this afternoon. She has been active and active member for many many years of the left group in the European Parliament. She is from Germany and lives in the region of Saxony and Poland on the very close to the border. After her we will hear from Havik Schuster. He's an expert on rail traffic in Greenpeace Europe and he will be representing Lorelay Limousin today. Unfortunately she has fallen sick and we're very happy to have Havik who will speak to us later. Then Christina Tilling she's the head of Land Transport of the European Transport Workers Federation and after that we will take a very short break giving you an opportunity to put your questions and we'll have a little debate and then we will be talking about the freight transport on the road and Volsand Liem will be giving a presentation from the International Transport Workers Federation and we're very happy that you made it because the ITF is organizing a mobility week right away and you're very busy so welcome. And Katerina Kotnicka will be speaking after her. She's also a member of the left group in the European Parliament, member of the Committee on Transport and Tourism and she has been elected the chairperson of the left party in the Czech Republic and we would like to congratulate her on her election and now Connie has the floor. Thank you very much. Thank you. On this very beautiful day with lots of sun I think we should have started 5 to 12 because the situation that we find in transport, road transport, rail transport everywhere it's 5 to 12 I can tell you and I'm a witness to it all because I can look out of my window onto the motorway it goes down to Romania and Italy or over to Belarus and it's a bit of a hub really a node if you like and I'm not a member of the Transport Committee as my colleague, my dear colleague Katerina Kotnicka who knows the situation so much better than I do but from my personal experience I know that it's a very, very important topic for so many people out there in the industry committee we also deal with questions concerning transport because so many things are interlinked with transport that happen in industry research and energy so we must also take the situation in transport on board. If we want a radical change in transport then there cannot be any question as to the necessity but the mobility change paradigm change must first happen in the heads of people because let's look at what's happening on the roads on the rails and how do we want to organize transport in the different different areas. We also will have to discuss individual transport and so I think we really have to look at things more globally in an integrated matter on the 24th of February we already had a conference on the subject but we were considering the transporter rail transport at the time and we already heard that rail transport was so neglected over decades and there are really areas and lines that have totally fallen apart and need to be there needs to be a remedy for that so much of the freight has been loaded onto the roads and that's very unfortunate we also need much more cooperation in order to improve the connectivity of rail transporter transport and we also need more connectivity between road and rail we also need good ideas new projects to move forward to make real progress in this area and we need to clarify what will it mean for the workers perhaps we'll also have to talk about kind of just transition in the transport area and we as a party looking at social repercussions always we really need to to consider the social repercussions on the workers on their living and working conditions on their wages and so on so let's look at how we can improve rail traffic across the borders but also inside individual countries and I really look forward to working on some concrete proposals here today and I'm very happy that we'll be given an example from Korea because there are some very good practice examples out there and perhaps these examples can also be replicated in Europe so what we need are plans for a fair transition for a future for our workers and for new definitions of our transport sectors it's very very hard on everyone because people don't like those massive changes but we have to change definitely because otherwise we have no future so I'm very happy that this conference is taking place I wish you much luck and very good ideas and a good debate to everyone thanks the first part is in July the first part of this fit for 55 package has been introduced by the Commission this summer so the question is how can we manage a just transition also for the mobility and transport sector and now I would like to give the floor to Havik Schuster from Green Peace Europe Havik thank you very much from Vienna thank you very much for the invitation to today's conference I'm always pleased to be invited as a guest speaker to such a conference I don't think I have to explain Greenpeace but maybe I should say that our transport campaign has been the most recent campaign at European level so I should like to give a few explanations about our main goals what are we working on in terms of transport and why is it something that we worry very much about considering the European level at first we are focusing on a reduction of the transport volume overall that means passenger transport talking about video conferencing for example but also freight transport less cargo less transport etc and the second issue is a massive shift the so-called modal shift that is the shift from road to rail and also C transport two three years ago we commissioned a major study on this topic that is called the EU transport roadmap and the goal of the study I will share my screen the goal of this study was to contract two institutes in Belgium and in Germany to see how can't the transport sector be decarbonized by 2040 so the result is a huge mix of measures I don't think there's this one fit for all solution that can be applied to every sector I think we need various sectors for the various sector various solutions for the various sectors looking at this graphic that shows the number of measures that are necessary here the two blue parts concern the technological change so we need more efficiency and we need to shift to alternative technologies especially electric mobility as much in the passenger sector as well as in the freight and cargo sector the smaller blue part that is synthetic fuels that are mainly in the navigation sector and only for the remaining long-haul sector because short-haul sector foresees shift from aviation to rail as much as other fields are concerned we don't see that in the technological change because it's not efficient and I think we should mainly use renewables of course some are talking about hydrogen as a solution and in the aviation sector as synthetic fuels on the right hand side you see the systemic change that is necessary for one the avoidance of transport then the shift to environmentally friendly transport modes where the rail is playing a major role and then also the ban on combustion engine cars so these are the major blocks and I think there is no one-size-fits-all solution we need several solutions and there is a second graphic that I would like to show you when we talk about the freight transport ideally that would be the distribution of the transport by 2040 so drastic reduction of lorry transport and the shift to the sea and rail transport and aviation of course in terms of cargo is less important so this is where we should go in the future and of course as far as the lorry transport is concerned that would mean to reduce lorries from about six million per year to three to four million lorries in the European Union so this study is the framework for our campaign before we had the year of the European rail so a strong focus on rail transport Manuela mentioned that we could stake talk this take stock about this European year of rail today I think it's a bit premature for now we haven't really seen much results as far as the European year of rail are concerned of course several initiatives were presented and that's a good thing but I think what we have to wait for is the European action plan for the cross-border rail transport that is something that we can probably expect for December by the Commission and at least for us at Greenpeace we haven't really heard much about how ambitious these goals and this action plan is supposed to be as far as our demands are concerned with regard to the rail transport of course we have several demands maybe I can briefly talk about the four major areas one demand concerns the cooperation between the rail companies so that the European rail operators can have a closer cooperation because I recently went to Barcelona by train and I had to buy my tickets from three different rail operators and it took three hours to get my ticket and I think that's just simply not acceptable and it's really difficult for example companies to transport their cargo from Austria to France so logistically it's just not feasible simply because the rail operators are not cooperating closely enough and the second part is investment we need massive a massive shift of investments from the aviation sector and the construction of roads towards the rail sector our approach is that especially with concern to cross-border connections we need to invest rapidly so that we can avoid bottlenecks basically it's much more important and much more efficient if we invest in existing lines and that's something we see quite critically because a lot of investment is going into new lines that are being built and I think it's much more important especially with regard to Eastern Europe we invest in existing lines that so far are still with a very low speed for example so that we can increase the speed instead of investing in new projects so I think we should have a shift in investment and the major part of our demands is concerning the fact that other transport modes should have framework conditions that are worse for example the kerosene tax for the aviation sector or no rail toll or no VAT for rail tickets etc so we need to make clear that these transport modes are actually connected to real costs and I think that this truth about the costs needs also to be factored in with regard to the social costs because we want people to use the rail instead of the road and aviation and so of course it shouldn't cost more than it currently does so we need to factor in the social costs as well because at the moment rail tickets are much more expensive than low-cost airlines for example and that has been a problem for many years so I think we should actually take measures so that we can reach decarbonizing the transport sector so several issues are at stake and I think several issues that of course needs to be dealt with at national level as well and I was asked whether or not we focus on EU goals as well I think of course it's very important for example to have a stronger approach with regard to EU issues in Austria for example we have the problem that we have very many illegal lorries going through our country bad technical standards they are exceeding the driving times excessive lip speed etc everything that makes the transport by lorries cheaper than the transport by rail so what we can really expect from this action plan by the Commission we don't really know but we are at least in several areas quite optimistic that something will happen and some things will be changed especially as far as the cooperation between the rail operators is concerned I think there will be more investment in rail infrastructure etc and rolling stock for example I think there will things to be implemented but I don't know whether or not we can be really satisfied with this action plan last but not least the COP26 in Glasgow that's also the title of today's conference the COP in Glasgow for us is the most important climate conference since the climate conference in Paris of course also because there are better opportunities at a global level and it will of course depend on how the global community will agree on the ways to decarbonize and get out of coal oil and other fossil fuels as far as our topic is concerned the transport issue I don't think we will expect any kind of concrete results at the COP26 in Glasgow that's not the major issue as well but I think when it comes to decommission oil plants and everything else that will of course have repercussions on the transport sector as well at the moment oil is quite expensive I hope that will stay this way but because as quicker we can use other energy sources quicker we can decarbonize the transport sector as well thank you very much for your attention I'm looking forward to the later discussion thank you very much heavy for your very interesting presentation and the conclusion of the European year of the rail is a very weak one it's the 29th of October on Sunday the climate conference will start and nothing has been submitted but at least there's always the hope that there will be progress in the cooperation of the rail companies and our left party will definitely take that up in a very critical way I'm very happy to invite Christina tilling now she's the head of the land transport section of the European Transport Workers Federation you have the floor please thank you am I heard okay it works yeah okay yeah thank you very much for the invitation and I'll be more than happy to bring in the workers perspective to to this to this event I mean World Sun after the coffee break will bring additional elements definitely and probably more concrete but just to say that in the ETF we decided to have a land transport department as for first of January because of course there are a number of synergies between sex land transport sections notably between road and rail and we wanted to create a better coordination between that and you may wonder whether in our so to say union family there is there is an understanding between a trade union is trade unions representing roads with trade unions representing rail are they on opposed positions or have they found so to say a joint outlook on how the future of transport will look like in freight and I'm I have to say that we see the disaster situation in road transports and that is because road transport is artificially you know kept artificially cheap against all our modes of transport and we would like to have less and better roads transport for our workers and this is where we find the common ground of discussions between rail and road in the ETF but that is just by way of so to say introduction and clarification I'd like just to point out that long haul transport freight transport poses a key couple of problems really key problems for the workers one is work life balance and the other one is conditions work like balance the longer the journey the further away and the longer periods away from the family and as we all know mobility is I mean workers do want to spend more time with their families pandemic and the pandemic brought a new dimension to it it made the family life very vulnerable we all know the reasons for why workers want to spend more time in their social environment so when we talk about long distance we see the shortage of drivers being a cause of this new mentality that kicks in and drivers are no longer ready to rough it in parking areas and so on so forth for weeks on end and I would imagine the same as the European Commission and the policy makers step up plans to open the railway corridors and the freight you know the railway freight to to cross board the more cross border operations we may experience the same phenomenon in terms of yeah railway mobile and cross border crews will people or railway workers want to be away from home for long periods of time that will depend on the working conditions that will be created around this this measure we know that for example we just take the the lives of truck drivers yeah the shortage of well-equipped parking areas I mean what about the arrangements for mobile crews in rail transports for rest you know away from their countries access to sanitary facilities and so on so forth so there will be a key issue to be addressed by the by the policy makers at European but also at national level with regards to long haul rail transport if we don't want to see the same situation in road replicating in rail and that's we have the the possibility to address the attractiveness of a sector which is still you know palatable to workers such as rail in a very incipient phase let's not let things you know degrade in rail as we allowed them in roads transport that will be a key message from the ETF side the probably one of the again most important things will be the measurement of working time in the cross border operation but also within the national borders in road we have the so-called digital tachograph and we saw how important this tool is in measuring working time in giving an indication a clear indication on the pay of the driver but also in giving an indication of how long the driver spends outside of his or her country you know where the company is established in rail we do not have such tool and I would see indeed and we would as a section railway transport section in ETF we would see an emergency of you know getting an instrument to clearly measure working time as we step up you know growth of cross-border railway transport that's going to be important for the same reasons safety to start with but also measuring the entitlement of the drivers with regards to pay and as we all know in rail posting applies from moment one when a driver crosses the border such a tool would be instrumental in not creating social dumping and transport so the ETF is going to very much millitate for accompanying every piece of legislation and or soft tool that the European Commission issues and we know that's a proposal for the revision of the train drivers with the directives coming soon so we will be asking for measures including such tool for measuring working time to accompany any sort of you know intent to open indeed or to to lead to the growth of road rail across border rail transport in freight I think this is instrumental the question of training and that's my last point I would like to make is also to one of our concerns in road we have minimum requirements for training of drivers and in rail for the ETF it is not clear whether we could have that but what we know is that there is a discrepancy between member states when it comes to training of train drivers and not only that but the European Commission in this context wants to lower the language levels of cross of mobile cruise and cross-border cruise in road in rail transport and this we find I'd say a bit cheeky I will leave it there thank you thank you very much Christina thank you very much for giving us the perspective for about two sectors the road and rail sector and the situation of its employees I read that ETF demanded a few days ago to have a European year of railway workers as a response to the European year of rail I think that would make a lot of sense and I think your presentation really showed that this is an important topic I'm very much looking forward to Wilson Leem's presentation she will tell us about positive examples when it comes to combat social dumping in the freight transport Wilson Leem you have the floor I thank you very much Manuela and thank you very much for inviting me it was a little bit surprising to hear that you left in Parliament but they left in the EU Parliament would be interested in safe rates all the way over here in Korea but I'm happy to talk about it I think that all there are broad principles which are applicable to the Europe situation which I'll try to talk about cross-border situation but just note that the specificity of South Korea is quite different because of the way the market is structured and also because we're an island because of North Korea and so we don't have cross-border and so those differences are definitely there and try to talk about Korea but also general principles and a little bit how they play out in some other countries I actually have a presentation so I'm going to share my slide can you see that it's okay okay so I'll try to go through this quickly although it's quite a bit of material sorry yes so first to give you some background and I should just say also that Chris Christine is telling just mentioned we are in fact finishing a week of action was very much about safe rates both in Korea and then implementing these principles globally and right now the safe rate system we have in Korea which is in road transport in road freight transport is very new it's only two years old but it's also kind of in a tenuous situation because there's a sunset cross and so we're fighting to maintain it as that's part of what the action equals about but Korean road transport market is characterized by multi-levels of subcontracting low cost tendering just in time transport and one of the differences that we would be over 90% owner driver or misclassified drivers depend the contractors whatever you want to call them I think this is different for most places in Europe although I just learned that in Turkey for example the market is structured similarly this means that truck drivers in Korea don't have legally recognized trade union rights and so the the issues that we're talking about when we talk about safe rates or course both about working conditions or rights for truck drivers improving them improving pay but it's very much about improving safety and increasingly we also talk about this is in terms of improving sustainability of the sector both well I'll talk about that a little bit more in a second but the the logic that we're working on this is actually from a scholar from Australia which is also some safe rates like systems safe rate systems in some states and had a national system for a few years basically looking at the structure of the market and so we have big what we call clients or economic employers these are like retailer or producers manufacturers that contract for transport services they outsource the work and this creates economic pressures throughout the road transport supply chain and this means that drivers both there's pressures on transport companies to cut costs and this put truck pressure on drivers to drive well fatigued use drugs to stay awake speed in Korea it's overloading not maintain vehicles and this leads to crashes and so there's a relationship between truck drivers conditions and and road safety for the the road using public safe rates is of course in Korea but they're similar systems globally I obviously can't talk about all those but just to show that to you for a second from a European perspective I think there's three principles of a safe for safe rate system that are worth thinking about both from the perspective of stopping social dumping and increasing improving the conditions and livelihood drivers but then also from a safety and then sustainability perspective and I also think that these are things that kind of compliment the mobility package some things are in the mobility package the one thing that is I think not in the mobility package that's key to a safe rate system is client responsibility so there's there's mechanisms and it's done in different ways in different countries and I'll tell you how we do it in Korea but there's mechanisms within the system to make sure that clients are cut they're not undercutting transport companies so much that they can't pay their drivers and that's important because essentially we're saying to the the companies with power you have to take responsibility for right safety and sustainability the goal of the system is to equalize rates and conditions between different types of drivers so in some context that's between employee drivers versus owner drivers in Korea we're mostly owner drivers but in most other countries it's there as well as between outsourced and insourced stop social dumping and reduce the incentive to do that outsourcing and using non-standard forms of employment and then really really key and I think Christina mentioned this also the monitoring and enforcement of the system is essential and in the best systems we have trade union participation in that so those are the big principles this is much more complex and I won't go into it in detail I will know that in 2019 we were able to embed these principles into guidelines passed at the ILO their guidelines so they're agreed to by the tripartite parties at the ILO but they're not an enforceable standard yet nonetheless we think the principles are important and it's less the guidelines themselves and more the fact that they point to principles that can be implemented in different contexts and so we've been this part of what we're also talking about during the action week and I think so I won't go into all of this but from an owner driver perspective if you're getting a trip rate and you're paying for the cost of your vehicle and everything the idea is to embed those costs with a cost recovery model into the rate that you're getting as well as to make sure that all working time is compensated even on driving time this of course applies to not just owner drivers but all drivers and there's a calculation to make that happen and that yeah and this is applicable again to all drivers so you would have a for an employee driver an hourly weight that is equalized within owner drivers rate rate or you know in the European context obviously there's this goal of equalizing the rates of pay or the wages between cross-border drivers and national drivers this is what this looks like in Korea so in Korea we set two rates we set the rate that the clients have to pay to transport companies and then we set the rate of pay that transport companies have to pay to truck drivers based on a cost recovery model that's what the cost recovery model looks like but I don't have time to go into it so that and this is important for sustainability and I'll talk about why in one second and the for the system the main principles of the system to set these rates that are important I think from the European perspective is that a unions participate so in Korea we have a actually quad part-time rate setting committee clients transport companies us and the government and that obligations are put at clients at the top of the supply chain so that they have to make sure that the rates are sustainable throughout their supply their their contracting chains and that there's monitoring enforcement based on chain of responsibility principles meaning that every the starting from the client down to the bottom of the chain there's monitoring before an enforcement at each of those levels so client responsibility is key and I said this is done in South Korea through the rates model but in other places it's done in different ways so in California it's joined in several liability import trucking if you didn't you don't pay the right wage the client can be sued in Australia they use the term chain of responsibility of course in France we have due diligence so if you can say that this is a human rights violation you can make a big French company responsible and of course in the ITF with some other international organizations we have a goal and in some cases agreements with clients that set standards and then the trade union is investigating and enforcing those standards and that's an agreement with the clients and this is important so the impact on safety in Korea since the introduction of safe rates after six months 33.6 percent reduction in speeding 39.9 percent in overloading from a driver survey that we commissioned there are also studies from other countries that talk about if a rate of pay increases then the likelihood crashes decrease and I think that so in terms of decent work we're talking not just about setting conditions but we're talking about creating an industry structure that makes it possible to have decent work within road transport this is so again equalized conditions to minimize the race to the bottom and social dumpling in Korea the research shows that by doing this we're removing links in the subcontracting chain because you know you have to pay a certain rate so there's no there's no point in trying to cost cut in that way and it's an incentive to direct employment and client responsibility what this means for sustainability is and I think this is really important is the idea of cost recovery is that clients at the top of supply chains are not paying for the externalities the social externalities of their operations they're not paying for safety by paying all driving time for example and they're also not paying environmentally sustainable you know environmental costs of transport by trots and so for example they're long waiting times because they don't have to pay for it in ports and things they're more empty trips because they don't have to pay for it in Korea we have massive we one of our issues is oversupply because that's a way to induce competition and so this type of system creates efficiency forces clients and big transport companies to reduce waiting time reduce empty trips it controls oversupplies and then ultimately I think it'll end excuse me we're just talking about how you could embed in a rates model like this or a pay model that cost recovery model the cost of for example electric vehicles and the cost of just transition and so there's an opportunity to make this a more sustainable model although we're just having that discussion I would just say that in our union kpt and my union we have both rail and truck drivers we haven't had this discussion yet but I mean in theory this will raise the cost of as Christina said less jobs better jobs for truck drivers so it should raise the cost of of truck transport and by embedding all of the social costs into it which in theory could then have an impact on rail transport in Korea that won't happen because as I said we're an island we don't have cross border we don't have a industry a market of scale for for freight yet until we have you know peace with North Korea but in another context that might be one of the yes and you can have the slides later but that might be one of the the at least theoretical results but we haven't we haven't done this long enough to be able to talk about that concretely but theoretically it's an interesting discussion yeah thank you very much well son that was a very interesting presentation even though it's an island but I think it was very interesting to have this positive example even though far away and the first tests have shown that safety on roads has increased and social dumping could be restrained but of course long-term consequences need to be examined further thank you very much also for talking about the role of the itf and the ilo that's also a quite important point that there can be global standards coming from that organization and then now I'm looking forward to hearing from Katarina Konicka she was chief negotiator from her party and her group the left about the mobility package that was decided upon a year ago and this mobility package has the goal to restrict social dumping in road transport and I think it's quite a mixed stock that was taken but maybe Katarina can talk more about it you have the floor okay thank you very much for inviting me of course I can never say no to Cornelia I hope you can hear me my contribution will show unfortunately that to ensure good social working conditions for the transport workers is not easy it requires a lot of effort it's a lot of rigorous work and many legal discussions therefore it might be a topic that is easily neglected and for some very abstract therefore I appreciate today's meeting because I know that you all are really striving for a change all of you will have heard of mobility package one so I would just like to briefly remind you that this is the first mobility package out of three packages in which there are eight reports eight areas divided into two groups the first group is technical with reports on a hired freight transport and Euro vignette and the second group is a rather political one for example driving and rest time rules techographs posting of drivers and a couple tash I took over the report on the posting of drivers from a former colleague Maria Kilonen who had not been re-elected into the European parliament in 2019 but she had done a great deal of work mainly in the parliamently negotiations I was supposed to lead the three-part type negotiations and a subsequent vote in plenary it was an extremely difficult task also from the technical point of view because the reports on the posting of workers tachographs and cabotage were interlinked so if one part in one report changed it meant also changes in another or all reports as well the meetings of the shadow reporters had to take place at the same time and the representatives of the employment committee also took part in these meetings because they have exclusive remit over certain parts so while during the normal meetings of shadow reporters there are only 20 people we had sometimes 80 people attended there besides the complex technicalities we also had to face the opposition of almost half of the European parliament the European parliament was divided into in both the committee and in the plenary where the package had not been approved during the first reading because we missed one single vote for the amendment for the posting of drivers and then it was sent back to the committee one half the eastern half of the EU was convinced that the mobility package would destroy the road freight transport due to the newly imposed resections those countries do not mind that the truck drivers from Eastern Europe spent up to 50 weeks a year on the road which was also one of the amendments table that the driver would be obliged to return to return at least once every 50 weeks to home they didn't those countries did not mind that those drivers spent sometimes two days traveling in a van that will bring them to the truck where they have to immediately begin their work and that they have to help with loading goods during their statutory arrest time the social conditions as we can see are sometimes not an obstacle for the eastern european countries they only thought that if we make changes everything will collapse i do not know exactly how much the road freight transport contributes now to the GDP of one unnamed eastern EU country but during our negotiations it was 16 percent of GDP for example in Bulgaria in Bulgaria the road freight transport was 16 percent of GDP which is incredibly high percentage and it's very similar in other east european countries the representatives of ambassadors transport ministers their secretaries and even the prime minister of some states asked for the meeting because they wanted to put the reporters under pressure and that all to the detriment of the truck drivers and their conditions gradually we managed to undermine the arguments of the eastern member states against the mobility package and in the end we fortunately managed to approve the package with a fragile tiny majority however this has not discouraged our opponents and they are still trying to come up with amendments for the next reports that are currently being discussed so that at least some parts of the package changes in their favor unfortunately they do not have the required majority they even managed to get the newly elected commission for transport Adina Vallean from Romania on their site no wonder Romania was one of the loudest opponents the commissioner should be neutral of course it looks like it on the first glance but we know very well on whose side she is so we know that even appointing the commissioners might influence the process the biggest advantages of the package are in as for the driving and rest time the following the biggest success was that the regulation applies also to the light commission vehicles since the regulation enters into force the light commercial vehicles from 2.5 tons will have to be equipped also with intelligent tachographs and the so-called long breaks must be spent outside the cabin of the vehicle for example in the hotel and it had to be paid by the employer it's also possible to spend the break at the certified rest areas which must meet strict requirements for the safety hygiene and services then there is a regular return home every three weeks and all vehicles in international transport must be quick with an intelligent tachograph as for the posting of drivers the report I took over from my predecessor the drivers is considered to be posted if he carries out a cabotage and the so-called cross straight and the posting ends after leaving the host state and the previous periods do not add up the driver will be exempted from posting if he carries out bilateral transport from or to his member state and is allowed to carry out a maximum of two so-called cross trades implementation of an IMI database in which the documents about posting will be archived before the start of the journey has also taken place and the transport companies from third countries must not have any competitive advantage over the european ones as for the cabotage there should be no longer any letterbox companies every company should have an adequate facilities and a number of parking lots cabotage will also apply to light commercial vehicles and buses and cabotage will only be possible under specific conditions I will not burden you with that then there is also a new ERRU database kind of a register of transport operators and it's also important that every eight weeks the vehicle has to return to the country of establishment and the new commissioner mentioned that this return will certainly be incompatible with the ambitions of the so-called new green deal and ask for a study on behalf of the european commission because sometimes the vehicles do not return to the country of establishment only the drivers change but and the study says that if every vehicle in international traffic has to return to the member states of establishment every eight weeks it would increase the co2 emissions by 2.9 million tons in 2023 I think this might be true but only if the vehicles return empty and according to the model of market-driven economy this is hardly possible because every transport company will make sure that an empty car travels as few kilometers as possible and will certainly find some cargo that should be transported back to the member state of establishment every eight weeks this package should improve the working and social conditions and also safety of the transport workers but it probably will take some time before it is fully implemented before all the vehicles are equipped with the intelligent tachographs and before all the member states will be trained to control this data that will certainly take some time we believe that thanks to the mobility package the fraud with documents will also become extremely difficult because those documents will be stored in an online database the employers will also not be able to force drivers to manipulate the tachographs anymore the conditions for drivers will improve because there is nothing worse than to have a tight driver rushing down the highway at 100 kilometers per hour behind the wheel of a 40 ton monster truck so thank you very much for your attention I really appreciate your effort dear colleagues who really try to be at the site of the workers and we could together counter the capitalistic capitalist world whose only interest is to gain profits so we had a lot of support also in trade unions and thanks to them we managed to achieve so many positive things too for the transport workers of course we are not in the end of our journey but i think we've already gained a lot of positive things thank you very much thank you very much Katarina and thank you very much for giving us an idea of what has already been achieved and whether still room for improvements and what could be expected from the European Union level from the commission for example where parts of the mobility package will perhaps not be implemented whether it will be deferred whether it will be reopened whether it'll be disputed that will have to be followed very closely of course now I would like to give every one of you all of the participants the opportunity to raise your questions