Blog post

Schengen and cross-border traffic: trucks arriving in Germany

With the limits of Schengen being continuously tested, this chart looks at the possible economic implications of controls on cross-border traffic.

Publishing date: 20 January 2016
Authors: Uuriintuya Batsaikhan

3.8 million trucks from Austria and 3.1 million trucks from Poland crossed the German border in 2015. As the chart shows, they constitute the second and third most common origins for trucks crossing to Germany, after the Netherlands.

These numbers are increasing every year. From 1995 to 2012, Germany’s international road freight grew by 44 percent. 78 percent of total goods transport is currently carried out by road.

If temporary controls, such as in Denmark and Sweden, were to be implemented by Germany or its neighbours, the economic costs of delays would be considerable.

About the authors

Uuriintuya Batsaikhan

Uuriintuya Batsaikhan, a Mongolian citizen, has worked as an Affiliate Fellow in the area of European and Global Macroeconomics and Governance. She has a Master’s Degree from the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest and a Master of Public Policy Degree specialising in political economy, economic institutions and monetary policy from Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Prior to joining Bruegel, she worked at UNDP in Mongolia and the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin.

In her Master’s thesis, she analysed access to finance of SMEs during the financial crisis using a dynamic (dis)equilibrium model of credit demand and credit supply. At CEU, she wrote on the divergent means of inflation stabilization in post-transition Poland and Estonia and assessed the role of the Currency Board Arrangement (CBA) employed in Estonia.

Uuriintuya’s research interests include macroeconomics, banking and monetary policy, access to finance of SMEs and political economy of emerging countries.

She speaks Mongolian, English, Russian and German.

Declaration of interests 2016