Key points:
- Cabotage carried out in the EU fell 3.1% in 2025 to 48.3 billion tonne-kilometres, 7.5% below the 2021 level.
- In Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany and Austria, foreign hauliers performed more than 10% of domestic hire-and-reward transport.
- Lithuanian hauliers now lead the cabotage markets in France and Italy, while Portuguese operators dominate in Spain and hauliers from Luxembourg in Belgium.
- Irish, Danish and Austrian hauliers roughly doubled the volume of goods they carried in cabotage, even as the overall market declined.
A smaller market
According to Eurostat, hauliers carried out 48.3 billion tonne-kilometres of cabotage in the EU in 2025, 1.5 billion fewer than a year earlier. All three indicators fell: tonne-kilometres, tonnes and vehicle-kilometres. Compared with 2021, when cabotage peaked at 52.3 billion tkm, the market has shrunk by 7.5%.
The cabotage penetration rate, the share of a country’s domestic hire-and-reward transport performed by foreign trucks, also fell from 4.8% to 4.5%. The decline follows the trend we saw in Eurostat’s wider 2025 figures, which showed that international operators were losing ground while domestic transport grew.
Where foreign trucks matter most
In most EU countries, cabotage remains marginal. But in five countries, foreign hauliers carried out more than 5% of domestic hire-and-reward transport:
- Luxembourg: 10.8%, down a massive 10 percentage points in a year,
- Belgium: 10.7%, up 0.9 points,
- Germany: 10.7%,
- Austria: 10.1%,
- France: 6.9%, down 1 point.
The biggest increases were recorded in Lithuania (+1.7 points), Slovakia (+1.1 points) and Czechia (+0.8 points). The Netherlands saw one of the largest falls (-1.1 points).
In absolute terms, Germany remains by far the largest market, with 25.9 billion tkm of cabotage, more than half of the EU total. France came second with 10.5 billion tkm, a sharp drop from 12.2 billion tkm a year earlier. Italy followed with 2.9 billion tkm, while all other countries recorded less than 2 billion.
Who does the work in each market
Every major cabotage market has a different leader:
| Market | Share of EU cabotage | Largest foreign hauliers |
|---|---|---|
| Germany | 53.7% | Poland 63.3%, Lithuania 12.1% |
| France | 21.8% | Lithuania 24.6%, Poland 22.1%, Spain 18.9% |
| Italy | 6.1% | Lithuania 28.2%, Poland 16.3%, Romania 11.2% |
| Spain | 4.0% | Portugal 34.0%, Poland 20.3%, Lithuania 14.3% |
| Belgium | 3.2% | Luxembourg 29.2%, Netherlands 27.0% |
Source: Eurostat, 2025, shares of tonne-kilometres
Belgium and Spain show that cabotage is not only an East–West story. In Belgium, nearly a third of cabotage is performed by hauliers from neighbouring Luxembourg, and over a quarter by Dutch operators. In Spain, Portuguese hauliers lead, and Spanish hauliers in turn perform 87.6% of their cabotage in neighbouring France.
Lithuanians go further from home
The Lithuanian model stands out. Lithuania’s hauliers performed 15.7% of all EU cabotage in 2025, up from 14.7%, and most of it took place in countries that do not share a border with Lithuania: Germany (39.7%), France (32.6%) and Italy (10.4%).
Polish hauliers remain the biggest cabotage operators, with 42.9% of the total, but their share slipped from 43.8%, and three-quarters of their cabotage is concentrated in Germany. Romania (6.1%), Spain (4.5%) and the Netherlands (3.2%) complete the top five.
Unexpected growth: Ireland, Denmark and Austria
While the overall market shrank, hauliers from some smaller countries sharply increased the volume of goods they carried in cabotage:
- Danish hauliers: +121.2%,
- Irish hauliers: +99.3%, or 2.0 million tonnes more,
- Austrian hauliers: +77.2%, the largest increase in absolute terms at 2.8 million tonnes.
At the other end, Polish hauliers carried 5.8 million tonnes less, Slovak hauliers 2.0 million tonnes less (-41.6%) and Dutch hauliers 1.7 million tonnes less.
Eurostat stresses that cabotage figures are based on national sample surveys and carry a relatively high margin of error, typically 5–30% for tonne-kilometres. A single haulage contract won or lost can move a country’s figures significantly from one year to the next.
The rules behind the numbers
Cabotage in the EU is still limited to three operations within seven days after an international delivery. Since the Mobility Package, a four-day cooling-off period applies before the same vehicle can carry out cabotage in that country again, and smart tachographs automatically record border crossings and loading operations, making the rules easier to enforce.
Another key element of the package, the obligation for trucks to return to their home country every eight weeks, no longer applies after the EU Court of Justice annulled it in October 2024.
