These last few years French international road freight transport has been undergoing a loss of
influence within Europe while traffic has increased and great manoeuvres are taking place
since the opening of the European Union towards East. Some of the French transporters are
then focusing back on the French market showing a worrying loss in competitiveness. On the
contrary, German and Dutch companies are increasing their shares in the French market and
have reorganized themselves within Europe to face eastern Europe competition: follow-up on
customers delocalizing in the East, networking, hyperproductivity, markets segmentation
between high quality transport in the West, specific markets and low cost segment in eastern
Germany or/and Poland, intensive geographical  closeness to a great harbour (Rotterdam)…
What should we learn from German and Dutch experiences to be used towards a renewal of
French road transportation in the international field?  
On the basis of a comparison of our neighbours’ driving costs and road freight transport
structure, our contribution - a synthesis of two recent studies ordered by  the Comité National
Routier (CNR, studies free to be downloaded by   www.cnr.fr) - will first propose a
cooperation with German or Dutch companies in order to propose a winner-winner model
based on exchange of competencies : North  Africa (Morocco for instance) and Southern
Europe for French partners (specialization Storage - Logistics) and  transport business model
and opening towards the East for the German and Dutch partners. An interesting proposition
would be to get close to Moroccan operators in order to rebalance the international freight
road transport in Europe  between a dominant Centre-East and a developing Centre-
Mediterranean.