The first Inter-parliamentary Dialogue on Eurasian road transport was held today in Moscow, where Members of Parliament from eight Eurasian countries gathered to exchange views, experience and best practices in road transport policy to support the development of a harmonised, integrated legal framework that would help promote and facilitate trade and international road transport across the Eurasian continent.

Moscow – Upon IRU’s initiative, backed by the Russian State Duma’s support, Members of the Parliaments from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Ukraine gathered today for the first meeting of the Inter-parliamentary Dialogue on road transport. Together with leaders of IRU Member Associations from the respective countries, the MPs addressed key transport policy and industry issues, exchanged experience and best practices to ensure that Eurasian economies can fully benefit from the competitive, high quality services provided by international road transport. 

Welcoming participants, IRU Secretary General, Martin Marmy, highlighted that: “In the last 50 years, road transport has become everywhere the main mode of transport to ensure the sustainable mobility of people and goods and is no longer a simple mode of transport but has become a vital production tool, interconnecting, door-to-door, every business to local, national, regional or global markets. Considering the numerous regulations that apply to road transport, today’s meeting should give the lawmakers, specialised in road transport, the ideal opportunity to exchange views with colleagues and representatives of the business community to improve the effectiveness of the required legislation in order to allow trade and national economies to better benefit from the irreplaceable, vital service provided by the road transport industry.”

Sergei Zheleznyak, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, praised the IRU initiative to create the Inter-parliamentary Dialogue, stating, “The effective way to remove non-physical barriers to road transport and create an integrated transport system and open market of transport services, is by joining UN Conventions and integrating international standards into national legislation”. He also added: “I hope that the IRU initiative on Inter-parliamentary Dialogue on road transport will be further developed”.

Topics discussed by the Inter-parliamentary Dialogue included collaborating on transport regulation, effectively implementing the key UN trade and transport facilitation instruments such as the Harmonization and TIR Conventions, as well a new international legislation for passenger road transport.

UN multilateral trade and transport facilitation conventions were recognised as the most effective tools to ensure smooth, efficient, secure and traceable international road transport, and that national parliaments should ratify the key Conventions and ensure their effective implementation once ratified. All parliamentarians were therefore called upon to ensure proper implementation of laws at national level, rather than merely passing them and, in particular, to enforce at national level the UN trade and transport facilitation instruments they have already ratified.

The Inter-parliamentary Dialogue closed by adopting a Joint Statement, listing concrete steps and actions towards the further promotion of international road transport of goods and passenger in Eurasia.