The draft by the Ministry of Transport stipulates that the truck toll should increase at the beginning of 2023.
(Photo: IMAGO/Sylvio Dittrich)
Berlin The traffic light coalition has finally agreed to increase the truck toll next year. As the coalition factions announced on Thursday, a toll reform is also to come on January 1, 2024. These included extending the truck toll to vehicles over 3.5 tons and a CO2 toll. So far, the truck toll applies from 7.5 tons.
The parliamentary group and party leaders, together with Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), agreed on a corresponding decision at a meeting of the coalition committee on Wednesday night, as the Handelsblatt learned from government circles. Accordingly, the transport committee of the Bundestag is to decide on the draft law for the toll law in a special session on Friday morning so that it can pass the Bundesrat at the end of the month.
A week-long argument followed. For example, the SPD and FDP had insisted on making the regular adjustment of the truck toll alone. According to a new report, it should have fallen slightly. Now, however, it is increasing somewhat, as infrastructure and noise costs will also be included in the future. The additional revenue from the truck toll, which hauliers with vehicles over 7.5 tons have to pay on motorways and federal highways, is estimated at 665 million euros per year in the draft law.
The Greens had also called for more far-reaching plans to be enshrined in law. The coalition wants to raise a CO2 surcharge from 2024 and also include vehicles weighing 3.5 tons or more. The Greens also demanded that in future the income should no longer be available entirely for road investments, but for all modes of transport.
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The demands of the Greens are now to be implemented, but at the insistence of the SPD and FDP not already in the law that regulates the increase in tolls from 2023. Next year, the coalition will pass “a toll law with the extensions as agreed in the coalition agreement,” it said.
Toll revenue should also go to other transport sectors from 2024
Above all, however, the additional revenue will flow into the budget “from 2024 onwards”. “The exact distribution” will be agreed “as part of the budgetary deliberations on the 2024 budget,” according to the agreement.
In order to achieve the climate goals in the transport sector, it is considered elementary to make truck traffic climate-neutral. However, there are still no commercially available battery or hydrogen-powered trucks.
>> Read here: “Have to rebuild the road space” – The car is no longer the measure of all things
Manufacturers are nevertheless pushing for diesel-powered vehicles to become more expensive. “Truck builders like MAN need clarity so that their battery-powered vehicles can also be sold,” said the reporter for the Greens, Matthias Gastel, to the Handelsblatt. The draft law must therefore “provide clear indications of where the journey is going,” he demanded.
In fact, Daimler Truck boss Martin Daum recently stated that battery-powered trucks would be significantly more expensive and that they could not be subsidised. “That’s why you have to make what you don’t want more expensive, for example with a CO2-based toll. So that it becomes cheaper to drive electrically,” he said.
More: Pressure for diesel trucks to be phased out more quickly is increasing – freight forwarders are alarmed