Malta is resisting a proposed revision of the current EU’s Eurovignette Directive on tolls for trucks that would allow national governments to offset pollution costs caused by heavy vehicles, despite the fact that this week the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre found in a report that the overall benefit of charging trucks for the pollution they cause outweighs the limited negative price impact on consumers.

Along with Malta, peripheral countries such as Portugal, the Baltic countries and Ireland are also opposing the redraft, arguing that additional road charges would impose higher costs for trade.

The European Commission proposed a revision of the current directive on tolls for trucks to allow national governments to offset pollution costs in July 2008 and forms part of a package of initiatives aimed at rendering transport more sustainable. The initiative’s overall aim is to develop a transport pricing system to cover the negative environmental impacts of road freight, such as air and noise pollution.

While the proposal has been commended by environmental NGOs, member states remain divided over the issue, industry stakeholders have joined forces to denounce the ”incorrect” assumption that merely increasing costs will lead to more sustainable transport.

A compromise on proposed environmental charges for trucks tabled by the Czech EU Presidency a year ago failed to convince the Union’s member states, many of which also argue that a recession is not the right time to impose extra costs on the transport sector.

The aim of the JRC analysis was to calculate the cost for international transport operations of the proposed Eurovignette Directive.

The JRC report argues that 20 to 30 per cent of the total external cost charges can be absorbed by operators themselves ”in the form of improved efficiency and/or technology”. Even if the total cost were passed on to the user of the transport services, ”they would still have a very limited repercussion on final prices”.

The authors conclude that “the overall benefits of charging for external costs outweigh the limited negative price impacts on individual transport operators” and argue that external cost charges can change transport system users’ behaviour without increasing transport and product costs significantly.

Therefore, the principle of internalising external costs could be applied to other transport modes to provide “a level-playing field” and produce sustainable solutions for the whole transport system, stresses the EU research facility.

In a related subject matter, the Maltese government intends to request an exemption from EU rules on air quality and PM10 traffic pollution, which were meant to have been implemented on 1 January, until mid-2011.

While no infringement proceedings have been instituted against Malta on the issue, EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas recently said in reply to a European parliamentary question, “In view of the fact that Malta has neither submitted a notification nor demonstrated that compliance with the limit values has been achieved, the Commission is currently considering launching infringement proceedings against Malta for non-compliance with PM10 limit values.”

According to the annual air quality report for 2007 submitted to the Commission by Malta in December 2008, Malta’s PM10 limit values continued to be exceeded in the Sliema and Gzira areas, while NO2 concentrations had exceeded the limit, which comes into force at the beginning of 2010, by 25 per cent.

PM10 pollution refers to particulate matter 10 micrometers in size or less, while N02 is nitrogen dioxide.

Once Malta submits its notification for an extension, the Commission will have nine months in which to assess whether the conditions attached to an exemption request have been met.