The additional costs resulting from the new road transport reforms, set to be voted on in the European Parliament this coming Wednesday, might need to be passed on to clients, according to one of the leading stakeholders in the sector.

Jimmy Cutajar, Managing Director of Global Freight Solutions said that freight forwarding companies and their agents could ill afford any financial fallout which could arise from the implementation of new European Union trucking rules.

The new legislation aims to provide better working conditions for truck drivers but, in so doing, is forcing logistics firms to organise return transport for their trucks to their company’s operational centre every eight weeks. 

Malta has been a vociferous opponent of the implementation of the new rules within the EP, which critics say discriminate against islands and former-Eastern bloc countries, such as Romania, Poland and Bulgaria.

“The new restrictions would be a big problem for Malta, since there are expenses to bring the vessels down, the trucks down and the drivers. We would have to pay for the ticket of the drivers as well as the ferry space for the trucks and these can be expensive,” Mr Cutajar said.

He pointed out that if ferry tickets for trucks coming back down to Malta are 200 euros, and a logistics firm has 20 vehicles, then the additional costs could be exorbitant. “And trailer companies cannot absorb these extra fees, so the client might have to suffer,” he said, adding that this was especially the case today, as companies are still dealing with the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic on their bottom lines.

Mr Cutajar, however, couldn’t specify by how much precisely expenses could rise since this would depend “on the nitty gritty of the laws”, since “every new demand might result in an extra expense.”

Asked if GFS had been approached by the authorities to gauge reaction to the proposed reforms, Mr Cutajar said “the short answer is no; I haven’t been contacted.”