The Good, the Bad and the Rest: How the European Union Responded to the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Transport Sector

Due to its severity, the COVID-19 pandemic is one of the greatest crises to have tested the European Union’s (EU) ability to take effective action. The restrictive measures adopted by the Member States to curb its spread affected in particular the free movement of people and partly of goods. This prompted the EU to take action inter alia to maintain essential travel, protect supply chains, enhance contact tracing and facilitate the coordinated resumption of travel. Building on the notion of “output legitimacy”, this paper assesses the EU’s success in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in transport by looking at the four main initiatives between the end of 2020 and June 2022, namely: (1) the EU Digital COVID Certificates; (2) cross-border contact tracing through Passenger Locator Forms; (3) the “Green Lanes” for freight transport; and (4) the coordinated approach to facilitating safe and free movement. These initiatives are measured against the EU’s legal competence, economic interests, political pressure and the added value of EU action. While recognising the small set of cases, the results show that, although legal competence is a decisive factor for success, EU initiatives can achieve equivalent effect even in its absence, provided other conditions are met.