Today Lithuania and other EU Member States won a significant legal victory concerning the Mobility Package: The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has annulled an obligation in the EU’s Mobility Package requiring road freight vehicles to return to their centre of operation every eight weeks.

‘I am glad that the Court has listened into the argumentation submitted by Lithuania and other countries and, finally, annulled this discriminative provision of the Mobility Package. We have consistently maintained position that the Mobility Package as such was not in line neither with the ambitious aims of Europe‘s Green Deal nor the principles of the internal market. My sincere ‘thank you’ goes to the Ministry of Justice, Lithuanian diplomats and carriers for the common effort and unity on the legal path that took several years’, – says Marius Skuodis, Minister of Transport and Communications of Lithuania.

Karolis Dieninis, Head of the EU Law Unit at the Ministry of Justice, who represented Lithuania at the CJEU, notes that the judgment marks an important victory in securing freedoms in the internal market.

According to Karolis Dieninis, ‘legal regulation in the EU must be well-founded and in line with the EU treaties that cannot be undermined by protectionist provisions of the EU legal acts. The CJEU’s ruling emphasises the importance of balanced regulation that does not burden transport operators with unnecessary requirements’.

Seeking to ensure that Lithuanian carriers are not discriminated against and do not experience unfair competition due to unjustified and disproportionate requirements that confer an advantage on carriers from other countries in the EU‘s internal market, in 2020 Lithuania lodged a complaint concerning provisions of the Mobility Package that are disproportionally stringent with the CJEU. In 2021, Lithuania joined cases of other countries in the CJEU.

Apart from Lithuania, the new rules were objected by eight other countries: Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Malta and Cyprus.

At the end of 2023, a formal proposal to abolish the provision in Mobility Package that requires the return of trucks to their country of registration every eight weeks was also made by the Advocate-General of the CJEU.

Moreover, according to results of a study carried out by the European Commission in 2021, a mandatory trip of a truck back to the country of its registration every eight weeks would result in additional carbon dioxide emissions of almost 3 million tonnes, which would increase total emissions by international cargo haulage by nearly 5%.

The International Transport and Logistics Alliance estimates that returning of trucks increases annual costs of the Lithuanian transport sector by EUR 620 million.

The Mobility Package is a set of the EU legal acts regulating cargo carriage by road in the EU. Mobility Package provisions are applicable for all the EU Member States since 2022.