EU's “three-in-seven” road haulage cabotage rule – Impact imbalances across member states and the geography

Road cabotage within the EU, as a share of domestic transport of goods, varies greatly across member states. This can partly be attributed to EU's regime for consecutive cabotage. In addition to economic factors that reflect incomplete market integration, spatial factors appear to affect the impact of the current regime. The impact seems stronger for geographically large and centrally located countries with interregional homogeneity in trade. This may reflect that foreign hauliers under such conditions can utilize the characteristics of their standardized long-range trucks better, or because the likelihood of successfully fixing three favourable long-distance cabotage assignments within the seven days limit increases. Potential amendments to regulations in order to equalize the impact of EU's consecutive cabotage regime across member states' spatial characteristics include removing the limits to the number of trips within the seven days' time frame or shortening the time frame for carrying out the current maximum of three trips.