Inland waterways freight transport in Europe in 2007 remains stable

In 2007, 515.4 million tonnes of goods were transported on the EU inland waterways, almost the same value as in 2006. As regards transport performance, it reached 141,128 million TKm, 0.7% more than in 2006. The Netherlands, Germany and Belgium are the most important countries in the sector, between them covering more than 80% of this method of transport in the EU. France recorded more than half of the remaining goods transported within the EU. The data presented in this publication is based on the first data collection under the new Regulation on statistics of goods transport by inland waterways (Regulation 1365/2006). In some countries, the comparison with the previous year has to be considered with care, as a new data collection methodology is applied from 2007.