Minister of State Róbert Homolya represented Hungary in the TTE Transport Council on 5 December in Brussels.
Prior to the Council, a ministerial meeting was held on a Hungarian initiative with the participation of 13 Member States (PL, SK, CZ, HR, SI, LT, LV, MT, ES, PT, RO, IE, HU) in order to strengthen the common positions and " to speak in one voice "about the lex special proposal. Róbert Homolya, Secretary of State, presented the common principles that were unanimously endorsed by the representatives of the delegations of the Member States, and subsequently He invited his partners to Budapest in early March 2018 to strengthen our professional relations and coordinate our positions.
Ministers took note of the Presidency’s progress report on the 1st Mobility Package. The Transport Council discussed the revision of rules on market access, including the regulations governing access to profession and to the market, the revision of Directive of Posting of road transport workers (the so-called lex specialis) and enforcement of social conditions, as well as, the Regulations on driving time and rest time periods and on the tachographs too. Based on the debate, it can be concluded that the progress report reflected well the position of the Member States. The Head of the Hungarian delegation emphasized that he wanted to address mainly the connection between the road transport and social issues, since – as we see – it raises the major problems and concerns about the proposed regulations, especially in relation to the lex specialis proposal.
The Transport Council adopted Council conclusions on the progress in TEN-T and CEF transport. Hungary considers CEF a really successful tool for reaching EU transport policy goals. Hungary fully utilized the national cohesion envelope. Hungary welcomes the quick and efficient project-evaluation and decision making in the course of the CEF project-selection process which are definitely strong points of CEF which should be kept also for the future. Hungary believes that the grant element should remain the main form of financial support of CEF in the next Multiannual Financial Framework.
On the margin of the Council meeting, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the establishment of a new Amber rail freight corridor. Hungary will manage the Executive Board of the newly created corridor.
The corridor is based on the traditional ancient Amber route, linking the ports of the Baltic and the Adriatic Seas, connecting several important industrial and logistic centres in our countries. The establishment of the new corridor is of strategic importance for all our Member States’, facilitating a more efficient interconnection of the major intermodal terminals with the port of Koper, and with the major Polish intermodal terminals to the north-east, as well as the boosting of traffic between them. Moreover adding the Budapest – Kelebia railway line towards Serbia into the corridor gives us an excellent possibility to reach the Greek ports as well. The Amber corridor should play a significant role in distributing the goods coming from Far-East not only by rail, but also by ships to the Port of Koper.
The new Memorandum of Understanding of the Executive Board of Orient/East-Mediterranean Rail Freight Corridor was also signed and Germany officially joined to the corridor. This extension gives us a great possibility for increasing the rail freight traffic on our corridor by connecting the Baltic Sea, the North ports of Germany and Greek ports, which will definitely facilitate the flows of goods on rail within Europe, from and towards the Far-East as well.
