The guidelines are contained in a document titled ‘Questions and Answers on posting of drivers under Directive (EU) 2020/1057 in the context of transport of goods’.
In short, the document explains in what situations posting rules will apply or not.
According to the Commission guidelines, the rules apply in the case of cross-trade operations and cabotage operations.
However, the rules do not apply in the case of international bilateral transport operations, limited additional activities of loading and/or unloading, transit through the territory of a Member State without carrying out any activity of loading or unloading, and initial or final leg of a combined transport operation.
The key fragment of the text elaborating on those four exceptions is embedded below:
If you are still non-the-wiser after reading the above, the 15 different scenarios explained in the document on pages 4-20 should make things a little clearer.
At the same time, however, the scenarios also show how tough it could be to monitor the posted worker rules given the complexity of the various exceptions.
Moreover, it remains to be seen to what extent some hauliers based in countries with lower wage costs will tweak their operations in order to take advantage of as many of these exceptions as possible.