On 15 February 2023, the Commission sent a letter of formal notice to Denmark for failing to transpose into national law all the necessary provisions of the European Electronic Tolling Service (EETS) Directive, whose deadline was set for 19 October 2021.

The lack of full transposition of these rules is an obstacle to the interoperability between electronic road toll systems in the Member States and to the cross-border enforcement of road fees. The Directive, indeed, find its rationale in the need to achieve widespread deployment of electronic road toll systems in the Member States and in the neighbouring countries and to have, as far as possible, reliable, user friendly and cost-efficient systems suited to the future development of road-charging policy at Union level and to future technical developments. 

EETS, therefore, enables road users to easily pay tolls throughout the whole Union thanks to a single contract subscribed via a single service provider and the use of a single on-board unit, able to cover all Member States. This way, the EETS limits cash transactions at tolling stations and eliminates cumbersome procedures for occasional users, facilitating daily operations for road users and reducing congestions.

The letter represents the first step of the infringement procedure against Denmark, which now has two months to provide a satisfactory response to the Commission, failing which the latter may decide to send a reasoned opinion.

Marco Stillo