Skip to main content

Germany eyes national car tolls

Germany's conservative CSU party has said that it will issue a draft bill on a new road toll for cars in autumn 2011. It says that even if car taxes were lowered, extending the national tolling system from trucks to cars, would raise billions of euros over the next few years. However, Chancellor Angela Merkel is on record as saying that no tolls for cars will be introduced during the current legislative period.
April 17, 2012 Read time: 1 min
RSSGermany's conservative CSU party has said that it will issue a draft bill on a new road toll for cars in autumn 2011. It says that even if car taxes were lowered, extending the national tolling system from trucks to cars,  would raise billions of euros over the next few years. However, Chancellor Angela Merkel is on record as saying that no tolls for cars will be introduced during the current legislative period.

Meanwhile, in 2010 Germany raised US$6.4 billion via truck tolls, according to the German cargo transport office BAG. Foreign trucks accounted for 37 per cent of this amount. Euro V trucks contributed 51 per cent and Euro III trucks for only 32 per cent.

Related Content

  • EU may challenge German road toll law
    June 2, 2015
    The European Commission will consider a legal challenge against Germany over the new road toll law, according to Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. Critics argue that the toll discriminates against foreigners. The European Commission's President Jean-Claude Juncker said in an interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung that the planned German road toll did not appear to conform to EU rules prohibiting discrimination against foreigners. "The Commission, the guardian of the EU treaties, now has to explore
  • Europe’s car safety framework needs ‘overhaul’
    March 22, 2016
    Vehicle safety innovations are still benefitting too few road users in Europe due to an over-reliance on a voluntary testing programme rather than regulatory standards, according to a new report by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC). For almost twenty years, increases in levels of car safety in Europe have been driven mainly by the voluntary Euro NCAP programme which awards the safest cars with a 5-star rating. But according to new data, only around half of new vehicles sold in 2013 had been aw
  • Electric and hybrid vehicles fall out of favour with corporate fleets in Europe
    April 20, 2012
    According to the Arval, the car rental division of French banking group, BNP Paribas, the interest of Spanish companies in adding electric vehicles to their fleet has dropped 90 per cent in the past year, with just two per cent of companies expecting to opt for this type of vehicle before 2014. In 2010, 21 per cent said they would chose them. Hybrid cars also lost favour, with a 47 per cent drop in the number of companies intending to use them in their fleet from 30 per cent in 2010 to 16 per cent currently
  • Volvo vehicle safety world first
    May 25, 2012
    The world's first pedestrian airbag fitted as standard on the all-new Volvo V40 is the next step which the company says will go some way to help further reduce the number of fatalities involving pedestrians, currently 14 per cent in Europe and 25 per cent in China. It was in 2008 that Volvo announced a unique goal in stating that ‘By 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo'. To contribute towards that aim, it has fitted technology including pedestrian detection, city safety and the