Indeed, Carsten Hess, Head of Deutsche Post DHL’s Corporate Representation in Brussels, says that while the European Union has long talked grandly about how to remake transport across the continent, its record has been decidedly spotty. “There has been an inability over the past 30 years to create efficient cross-border European freight networks,” he says. “You have two philosophies: one is about constant new regulation, and the other is about enforcing the single market which the EU has committed to. But we don’t have any complete single market at the moment, whether on road, rail or on air.”

While Hess says the European Commission sets an admirable aim in its White Paper in March when it calls for a Single European Transport Area, he is more skeptical about whether the measures outlined in the document are feasible or desirable. “We have a very complex system of regulation and policies in the 27 member states, and that impacts supply chains, and increases costs and the environmental impact,” he says. “This could be reduced by creating a true Single European Transport Area, which is what the White Paper is about. How do we get to a win-win situation where you reduce complexity and costs and therefore increase efficient transportation and logistics?”

Deutsche Post DHL has a certain weight of expertise as the world's largest logistics group. Headquartered in Bonn, it has some 450,000 employees across the world, and last year generated revenue of €51.48 billion. As its name suggests, it merges the former German mail authority Deutsche Post and express mail service DHL, yet it has expanded its operations to cover freight, global forwarding, supply chain management, warehousing, and even online sales platforms similar to eBay. All this underlines Deutsche Post DHL’s experience in a range of transport and logistic fields, which could prove invaluable for decision makers hoping to devise new policies.

Yet while Deutsche Post DHL is an enthusiastic supporter of EU integration, Hess sees the rhetoric regularly let down by the reality. Two and a half decades after the launch of the Single Market program, there is still no European market in cross border freight, national rules on cabotage that still require many truckers to return home with empty vehicles, and still no sign of the much-vaunted Single European Sky. “Why are the Commission and the European Parliament not more ambitious?” he asks. “I always hear that this is complicated, with diverging national interests. But if we can agree on binding climate targets, why can’t we have a true Single European Transport Area?”

Hess also refers to Deutsche Post DHL’s own environmental credentials as the first global logistics company to set itself a carbon efficiency target: its GoGreen program aims to improve carbon efficiency, including subcontractors’ business, by 30% by 2020, compared to 2007 levels.

“We’d love to increase our rail freight as we and our customers have our own efficiency targets,” Hess says. Yet the company’s efforts to move more to rail are often thwarted by the very politicians demanding modal shift. “MEPs say they want modal shift from road to rail, but when it comes down to discussing it, they say, ‘Not in my constituency, no more noisy trains here.’ But how do you deal with it if politicians do not want them in their back yards?” Here we need to have an EU wide discussion on acceptance of transport and its necessary infrastructure deployment.

Hess says there are all kinds of obstacles to cross-border rail freight, like a lack of common standards, a lack of choice of operators, poor infrastructure and no full competition. “Rail freight needs to increase its service quality to attract customers. If you want an integrated co-modal transport system, with rail playing its part, you need to make sure that the service is there,” he says.

And despite what the White Paper says about shifting freight of more than 300km onto trains by 2030, the reality is that there are many cases where that is not feasible, Hess says. “For example, when you need overnight or just-in-time delivery, rail will not be the preferred mode,” he says. Hess argues that customers rather than regulation should decide about the mode. “Instead of those scenarios we should place our bet on smart incentives to foster technology driven industry solutions. There the White Paper’s Technology Roadmap could help to increase research ending into quick market deployment which provides operators with affordable greener fleet solution. If  new trucks with e-engines cost three times as much as normal diesel engines, do you really think operators will pay for them?” he says.

Which is why he feels that the White Paper, for all its aims, can only be the start of a new discussion. “Do we want a Single European Transport Area that is efficient and cuts down emissions, complexity and costs?” he asks. The White Paper should look more at industry-based and technology-based solutions, rather than another round of regulations that increase costs while most of the adopted legislation on a Single European Transport Market has not been fully enforced yet. Let’s put more efforts into smart solutions that provide incentives.”