Exclusions from posting in the case of road transport

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    On the basis of the Directive (EU) 2020/1057 sector-specific rules are introduced for the road transport sector.

    Because of the very high degree of mobility of the staff in the international road transport sector on the one hand and the resulting lack of a sufficient link between the driver, the service provided and the territory of a host Member State on the other, the following road transport activities are excluded from the notion of posting:

    • Bilateral transport operations involving the carriage of goods. These are activities in the road transport sector, i.e. Carriage of goods on the basis of a transport contract departing from the country of residence of the employer to another country or vice versa.

      For example: A driver, on behalf of a Polish employer, loads goods in Warsaw and then unloads them in Brussels. In that case there will be no posting as it is a bilateral transport activity involving goods.
       
    • Bilateral transport operations in the context of the carriage of goods, involving one additional loading and/or unloading in the country or countries crossed, provided the goods are not loaded and unloaded in the same country.
       
      • From August, the 21th on, this exclusion will only apply to those vehicles where smart tachographs are fitted.

        For example: A driver, on behalf of an Austrian employer, loads some goods in Vienna, then drives via Berlin where they load additional goods. They then unload half of the goods in Brussels and ends up in Calais to unload the rest. Here we speak of a bilateral transport activity in the carriage of goods with one loading and one unloading in the countries crossed by the driver. Consequently, there is no question of posting here either.
         
    • Bilateral transport activities in the carriage of goods, to the country of residence of the employer in which no more than two loading and/or unloading operations are carried out in the countries crossed, provided that the goods are not loaded and unloaded in the same country and that the bilateral transport activity was preceded by a transport activity which started in the country of residence of the employer in which no additional activity was carried out.
       
      • From August, the 21th on, this exclusion will only apply to those vehicles where smart tachographs are fitted.

        For example: A driver, on behalf of a Danish employer, loads goods in Copenhagen and unloads them in Madrid. Then they drive to Barcelona and load 1/3 of their lorry. In Marseille, too, they load goods until their lorry is full. On their way back to Copenhagen, they unloaded 1/3 of the goods in Brussels and 1/3 in Amsterdam.
    • Combined transport if the initial or final leg of the journey is a road section which itself consists of bilateral transport activities in the carriage of goods

      For example: The goods arrive - fully in line with the rules of combined transport - by boat in Ostend, are loaded into a lorry and then drive through Belgium to unload the goods in Hamburg. In so far as the route Ostend - Hamburg consists of a bilateral transport operation in the carriage of goods, the driver shall not be deemed to be posted to Belgium and Germany respectively.
       
    • Bilateral transport operations in the carriage of passengers when it concerns :
      • Bringing passengers from the employer's country of residence and dropping them off in Belgium;
      • Picking up passengers in Belgium and dropping them off in the employer's country of residence;
      • Taking and dropping off passengers in the country where the employer is located to carry out local excursions in Belgium.
         
    • One of the previous forms of bilateral passenger transport, in which passengers may additionally embark and/or disembark once in the countries crossed, provided that no passenger transport services are offered between two locations within the same crossed country. The same applies to the return journey
       
      • From August, the 21th on, this exclusion will only apply to those vehicles where smart tachographs are fitted.
         
    • When, in the framework of activities in the road transport sector, the Belgian territory is only crossed.