Bulgarian and Turkish cargo companies will pay a fixed fee of 43 euro each when passing through each other's countries, Bulgarian and Turkish transport ministers have agreed on, the Bulgarian Transport Ministry's press service said on December 2 2008.
Bulgarian cargo companies will be able to transport to and from Turkey without paying a fee, Bulgarian Transport Minister Petar Moutafchiev and his Turkish counterpart Binali Yildirim also agreed.
The agreement puts an end to the “cargo war” that has been going on trough since 2007 between the transport-regulating institutions of the two neighbouring countries.
The issue with Turkish trucks transporting cargo via Bulgaria was first raised in February 2007, when Bulgarian cargo companies asked for restrictive measure against Turkish trucks.
The companies said that since Bulgarian trucks were asked to pay transit fee from EU countries in the days when Bulgaria was not a member states there was no reason why Turkish truck should not be asked to do the same when passing trough Bulgaria.
As of July 1 2008, Bulgaria started charging Turkish trucks an 83 euro transit fee. According to the Turkish side, Bulgaria's move was a breach of a 1979 Bulgarian-Turkish bilateral agreement on road transit that would allow both sides to transport goods without paying any additional fees.
Until July 1 2008, this meant that Turkish cargo trucks were paying only for the obligatory vignette sticker when going trough Bulgaria.
On September 1 2008, as a counter-measure, the Turkish side started charging Bulgarian trucks a transit fee of 83 euro when entering Turkey.
When Bulgaria decided to introduce the its fee, the explanation authorities used was that Bulgaria had become a European Union member state and the cargo traffic between the two countries needed to be discussed again. Turkey did not accept the reasoning and called the fee a breach of the agreement.
As a result, Bulgaria's Transport Ministry offered to discuss the introduction of a regulatory framework that would apply for both Bulgarian and Turkish trucks. Such a framework currently exists for Serbian, Macedonian and Croatian trucks passing through Bulgaria.
