Germany will sue European officials over road toll
As Russkaya Germaniya writes, the European Commission has met German Transport Minister Alexander halfway by proposing changes to the long-suffering road toll project promised by the Christian Social Union to its Bavarian voters. Dobrindt, who insisted on including the toll in the coalition agreement, proposed charging a toll on all vehicles traveling on German autobahns and compensating domestic car owners by reducing the vehicle tax.
This method would not contradict Chancellor Merkel's promises that no German resident would have to pay more for using a car than today due to the road toll. But it would conflict with European anti-discrimination principles, according to which citizens of EU states must be ensured equal conditions throughout its territory. In concern over such equality, the European Commission was ready to completely reject the German road toll project, which would inevitably lead to its full cancellation, but now proposes to make changes necessary for ratification at the European level.
Germany is offered to charge a toll not only from foreigners, which de facto implies Dobrindt's project, but from everyone who uses German autobahns. Compensation for local drivers is possible, from the European Commission's point of view, by reducing the fuel tax or increasing payments per kilometer to the workplace, indicated in the tax return (today the so-called Pendlerpauschale is 30 cents per kilometer). These measures will reduce the financial burden from the toll on German drivers and avoid discrimination against foreign ones. In fact, German residents will receive benefits post factum; in the first case they will not be transparent, and in the second – intended only for those who file a tax return.
The Bundestag approved the road toll project proposed by Dobrindt about a year ago. It was planned to come into effect at the beginning of 2016, but considerations of the national project's compliance with European legal norms led to its freezing when the European Commission threatened proceedings in the European Court of Justice. The last time the toll issue was raised in Brussels was in February of this year, when Minister Dobrindt, in a letter to EU Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc, accused the European Commission of delaying the decision. The current proposals are obviously Brussels's reaction to Dobrindt's complaint.
However, the head of the German transport ministry will not be satisfied with such a conciliatory step – because a number of German drivers would incur additional costs under this compromise solution, contradicting the chancellor's promises. Thus, an out-of-court resolution of the issue is unlikely.
Dobrindt's office is confident that the toll project he prepared does not contradict European law, including anti-discrimination law, and insists on an early hearing of the case in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. The European Commission, for its part, states that it is not against the project as such – the criticism concerns the intended mechanism of its implementation with a preference for national interests. On the continent, there are enough examples of existing mechanisms for paying tolls on autobahns; all of them were implemented in cooperation between local authorities and European ones and were somehow brought into line with European agreements – including through litigation.
If the German transport ministry does not present another option for collecting payment for using autobahns in accordance with Brussels' recommendations (and this is obviously not in Minister Dobrindt's plans), then at the end of April the European Commission will challenge the Bundestag-approved road toll law. Germany will be given two months to, in turn, protest such a decision. If Dobrindt's office does not file a protest, the toll case could be referred to the European Court of Justice as early as mid-summer.