Mobility Package I - Denigrating Bulgarian Companies or Unlocking New Opportunities

     The proposed changes to European transport legislation lead to a few challenges for Bulgarian transport companies if adopted. Today we will look at each of them and possible solutions for the Bulgarian transport business. What are the challenges?

1. Calculation of wages based on the rates of the countries in which drivers stay longer than three days - this would complicate the process of calculating salaries, as the rates are different for each country. One possible solution is to create software that automatically calculates salaries based on the data obtained from the tachograph of each truck and the set rates for each country. This will automate and facilitate wage calculation processes, and at the same time save the cost of recruiting additional staff for their calculation. In order to reduce the initial investment costs for the development of such software, the order can be made by several companies to share them.

2. Returning drivers after the third week in the country of residence - this is probably the biggest challenge facing Bulgarian companies. The justification for the requested change is to provide a break for drivers and a balance between work and private life. Here are some questions: Are drivers agreed? If companies in which they work fail and have to work in another country away from their families, will this better affect their privacy and their families? If they migrate with their families, how would they affect their families and the economy they are going to leave, and how will it affect the EU as a whole? Isn`t it better after a longer course, the drivers just to have a longer vacation?

       One of the possible options is to join companies in a joint venture to register their own clusters of transport routes (per exampel in Germany, Italy, etc.) so that the time for Bulgaria to the branch to take 2 -3 weeks with unloading. Send the requisite number of drivers for 24 months on the DP A1 form (so the persons will remain insured under the Bulgarian legislation and the taxes and contributions due will be calculated according to it: https://europa.eu/youreurope /citizens/work/work-abroad/posted-workers/index_en.htm) to take delivery of the goods to the next landing addresses. The first driver will be able to return to Bulgaria with one of the traveling trucks transporting a shipment to Bulgaria. In this way, the investment costs will be divided between all the companies involved in the association (the financial burden for each of them will be much smaller). Establishing branches is a better option than relocating to another country because of lower tax and social security rates. With these changes instead of limiting the activity of Bulgarian companies, they will actually be forced to expand their activities.

In order to organize better their activities, a platform for ordering transport orders can be set up to include truck and carrier companies. Platform to show real-time free trucks, load-carrying capacity and groupage transport. This would improve the organization, quality of service and optimize prices.

   But the key question is: Why, after being united in a union, is it necessary to lead a quiet economic war and attempt to divide Europe into the West and the East? Who benefits from such a division? And there is no benefit for no one of the countries in EU in this case, because the consequences will return as a boomerang to the countries that have wished these changes. I would like to recall the theory of lost potential: https://svetlastaykova.blogspot.com/2019/03/blog-post_29.html, which is also applicable in this case. Here is what I mean: all the countries in the European Union are interconnected, which means that if one of them is not well, the whole Union faces a challenge and is not stable (the last example - the crisis in Greece).

    Instead of moving forward and developing together, we are wasting our time and resources in economic wars with each other, while competitors (I use the word competitors because we are still far from the moment when everyone are united and working together) out of the union are developing, introducing innovation, and at some point will be in the light of years ahead of us. At a time of destabilization, it will be easy to impose on the European market, and then losers will be all EU countries. This is the only way to show how easy it is to destabilize the union, not only in the sphere of transport. The Union is a union between different countries that have their different characteristics and potential, which is the great wealth of the EU. Policies and laws must ensure the development of this potential, not to resist differences.

   It would be much more effective to create a common European transport platform in which all European haulage companies are registered and, similarly to the example given above, to initiate real-time ordering.

  We should look globally, common to the EU how to develop transport. What is the potential? What innovations can be put in place to make European firms more competitive?