Road transport law

The growing mobility of individuals, the development of trade, the quest for competitiveness in the national economy, regional planning, respect for the environment and the fact that transport is carried out on the public domain mean that transport policy has to be included in the fundamental choices made by a State.

Transport economics is a discipline that mixes market elements with an administered economy. Indeed, it is both competitive and its opposite, private and public. Thus, infrastructure, social and tax regulations are the result of public choices, while free competition between companies is biased by public intervention at the operational level.

What's more, the State has constantly stepped up its intervention in an attempt to coordinate the various modes of transport, especially two of them: road and rail. However, road transport has steadily gained the upper hand over rail. The revision of the European Commission's White Paper on European transport policy in June 2006 recognized that, while transport volumes would continue to grow, road haulage was, and would remain, the primary mode of transport. Abandoning the notion of alternative modes of transport in favor of that of "co-modality", it is accepted that regulation between modes is above all determined by regulation of the road haulage sector.

In this perpetual concern for regulation, the State has constantly intervened to try and harmonize competition between modes of transport, mainly between rail and road. To achieve this, it has always tried either to regulate access to the public road haulage profession, or access to the market, by framing contractual relations in specific regulations. The current body of regulations applicable to road haulage bears witness to successive interventions governed by different philosophies.

For these reasons, it is difficult to imagine a public road transport law that is clearly distinct from private transport law. This is a highly regulated sector.

The road haulage sector is subject to specific social provisions, which form an important part of the applicable regulations.

Today, the fundamental orientations of transport policy are mainly the responsibility of the European Union. Within the framework of certain Community guidelines, domestic transport remains subject to the laws and regulations of each State.

Intra-Community transport is subject to EU rules, the primary aim of which is to eliminate obstacles at borders and contribute to the free movement of people and goods. However, in view of the continuing collapse of the French road haulage sector over the past 10 years, and the challenges posed by the enlargement of the European Union in...