The Regulatory Floor Under Bus Fleet Operating Costs

This article sets out the EU regulatory obligations sitting underneath a bus or coach operator’s cost base — which instrument, on whom, from when, requiring what — and puts no cost figure on any of them.

We could not open a primary source that puts a figure on European bus fleet operating costs, and this site does not publish what it cannot trace. The legal floor is traceable: each section is anchored to the instrument that governs it, read in the consolidated text where one exists and in the amending act where we quote one, and several of these duties leave part of a bus operation outside them.

Driver qualification: Directive (EU) 2022/2561

Directive (EU) 2022/2561 is in force. It codified Directive 2003/59/EC, which EUR-Lex shows as “No longer in force, Date of end of validity: 11/01/2023; Repealed by 32022L2561” — the older directive belongs in the past tense. The codifying text was published on 23 December 2022 and entered into force under Article 15 on the twentieth day following publication.

On the passenger side, Article 1 covers drivers of vehicles requiring a category D1, D1 + E, D or D + E licence, alongside the goods categories C1, C1 + E, C and C + E; Article 2 lifts the requirement for a closed list of exempt uses. Which of those categories a driver may hold, and from what age, is set out with its own sources in bus driving licences.

Three routes lead to the certificate of professional competence, and the hours sit in Annex I, not Article 6. Article 6(1)(a) is a course at an approved centre plus a test — 280 hours under Annex I, Section 2.1, at least 20 individual driving. Article 6(1)(b) is tests-only: under Article 3(1)(a)(ii) it “does not involve compulsory course attendance but only theoretical and practical tests”, so Section 2.2 sets minimum test durations rather than course hours. Article 6(2) is accelerated, and Section 3 sets 140 hours with at least 10 individual driving. Shorter durations apply to the drivers of Article 5(5), who hold a CPC and broaden or modify their activities from goods to passenger carriage or vice versa: for them Section 2.1 sets 70 hours, “including five hours of individual driving”, and Section 3 sets 35 hours, “including two and a half hours of individual driving”. Under Article 3(1)(a) a Member State “shall choose between” the first two; under Article 3(2) it “may also provide for” the accelerated one. The same three routes, the exemptions in Article 2 and the crossover between passenger and goods work are set out in Driver CPC explained.

Article 7 says what periodic training must consist of but fixes no duration. The figures are in Annex I, Section 4 — “35 hours every five years, given in periods of at least seven hours, which may be split over two consecutive days” — and “the maximum duration of the e-learning training shall not exceed 12 hours”. Article 8(2) sets the first course of periodic training “within five years of the issue of that CPC”, and that period is not fixed: a Member State may reduce or extend it, “inter alia, so that it coincides with the date of expiry of the driving licence”, though “the period may not, however, be shorter than three years or longer than seven years”. After that first course, Article 8(3) requires periodic training “every five years, before the end of the period of validity of the CPC certifying that the periodic training was completed”. When a fleet’s drivers first requalify therefore depends on the Member State, inside a three-to-seven-year window.

Driving time and rest: Regulation (EC) No 561/2006

Regulation (EC) No 561/2006 shows as “In force: This act has been changed. Current consolidated version: 31/12/2024”. Article 2(1)(b) brings in passenger carriage “by vehicles which are constructed or permanently adapted for carrying more than nine persons including the driver, and are intended for that purpose”. Article 3 takes work back out: its first point excludes “vehicles used for the carriage of passengers on regular services where the route covered by the service in question does not exceed 50 kilometres”. The Regulation’s driving-time, break and rest limits therefore reach part of a bus and coach operation, not all of it. The excluded services are not left without rules: Article 15 requires Member States to ensure that drivers of those vehicles “are governed by national rules which provide adequate protection in terms of permitted driving times and mandatory breaks and rest periods”, and under Article 6(5) a driver “shall record as other work” any time spent driving a vehicle used for commercial operations that do not fall within the Regulation’s scope.

Inside scope, Article 6 provides that daily driving “shall not exceed nine hours” but “may be extended to at most 10 hours not more than twice during the week”, that weekly driving “shall not exceed 56 hours and shall not result in the maximum weekly working time laid down in Directive 2002/15/EC being exceeded”, and that driving “during any two consecutive weeks shall not exceed 90 hours”. Article 7 requires “an uninterrupted break of not less than 45 minutes” after four and a half hours of driving, “unless he takes a rest period”; the break “may be replaced by a break of at least 15 minutes followed by a break of at least 30 minutes”. The rest periods those limits sit inside, and the working time directive that runs alongside them, are set out in driving time and rest rules.

Regulation (EU) 2024/1258 added a passenger rule to Article 7: for a driver engaged in an occasional passenger service, the break “may also be replaced by two breaks, of at least 15 minutes each, distributed over the driving period referred to in the first paragraph, in such a way as to comply with the provisions of the first paragraph”. Its recital 8 describes this as letting such drivers “split their mandatory break into two breaks of at least 15 minutes each while respecting the total required minimum break of 45 minutes”. It inserted a daily rest derogation, Article 8(2a): “Provided that road safety and the working conditions of the driver are not thereby jeopardised”, a driver engaged in a single occasional passenger service “with a duration of at least six consecutive 24 hour periods” may take the daily rest period “once within a maximum of 25 hours after the end of the previous daily rest period or weekly rest period, provided that the total accumulated driving time for that day has not exceeded seven hours”; on the same conditions it may be used twice in a service “with a duration of at least eight consecutive 24 hour periods”, and its use “is without prejudice to the maximum working time under the applicable law”. It also opened the Article 8(6a) derogation, which lets the weekly rest period be postponed “for up to 12 consecutive 24-hour periods”, to any driver “engaged in a single occasional passenger service”; its recital 11 records that this possibility had been limited “exclusively to international occasional passenger services”. The amendment deleted point (a) of Article 8(6a); the paragraph’s other conditions, in points (b) to (d), still apply.

To rely on the Article 7 split break or the derogations in Article 8(2a) and (6a) at a roadside check, Article 16(4) requires the driver, “until a digital journey form is available”, to carry on board a completed journey form, “which the transport undertaking shall be responsible for providing the driver with prior to each journey”, and copies of such journey forms covering “the previous 28 days, and, from 31 December 2024, the previous 56 days”. The duty to carry the copies “shall cease to apply at the latest when the vehicle uses a tachograph allowing the recording of the type of passenger service” concerned.

One piece of arithmetic is ours, not the Regulation’s: inside scope, a duty needing more than 90 driving hours in two consecutive weeks cannot be discharged by one driver.

Recording equipment: Regulation (EU) No 165/2014

Regulation (EU) No 165/2014 is in force. It was published in OJ L 60 on 28 February 2014 and entered into force the following day, 1 March 2014, under Article 48.

Article 3(1) requires tachographs in vehicles registered in a Member State “to which Regulation (EC) No 561/2006 applies”. The scope is borrowed, so the 50-kilometre exclusion carries across: a regular service outside 561/2006 is outside the duty in Article 3(1). Article 3(5) still lets a Member State, “in the case of national transport operations”, require tachographs in vehicles for which paragraph 1 does not require them. Article 3(2) and 3(3) let Member States exempt further vehicles via the derogations in Articles 13(1), 13(3) and 14 of that Regulation.

Article 23(1) subjects tachographs to regular inspection by approved workshops, carried out “at least every two years”; under Article 24(1), Member States “shall approve, regularly control and certify” the fitters, workshops and vehicle manufacturers which may carry out installations, checks, inspections and repairs of tachographs.

Article 3(4) and 3(4a) add a smart tachograph retrofitting duty for vehicles operating outside their Member State of registration. The deadlines do not share a starting point: Article 3(4) runs “no later than three years from the end of the year of entry into force of the detailed provisions referred to in the second paragraph of Article 11”, while Article 3(4a) runs “no later than four years after the entry into force” of those provisions. We reproduce the structure, not a date.

Roadworthiness testing: Directive 2014/45/EU

Directive 2014/45/EU shows as “In force: This act has been changed. Current consolidated version: 20/05/2023”. Published in OJ L 127 on 29 April 2014, it entered into force under Article 25 on the twentieth day after publication — 19 May 2014. Article 23(1) required transposition by 20 May 2017 and application from 20 May 2018.

Article 2(1) applies the Directive to vehicles with a design speed exceeding 25 km/h in categories M1, M2 and M3, N1, N2 and N3, and O3 and O4 trailers; a last indent, applying from 1 January 2022, adds certain two- and three-wheel vehicles and wheeled tractors on conditions of their own. Article 2(2) lets a Member State exclude listed vehicles registered in its territory, among them vehicles “used exclusively in small islands or sparsely populated areas”. Article 5(1) subjects vehicles to a test “at least within the following intervals”: for M2 and M3, as for N2, N3, O3, O4 and M1 taxis and ambulances, “one year after the date on which the vehicle was first registered, and thereafter annually”; for M1 and N1, four years after first registration and thereafter every two years. Article 5(3) lets a Member State set a period for the test “not exceeding the intervals laid down in paragraph 1”, and Article 5(4) lets it require an earlier test in the cases listed there.

Vehicle choice, but only in procurement: Directive 2009/33/EC

Directive 2009/33/EC, as amended by Directive (EU) 2019/1161, shows as “In force: This act has been changed. Current consolidated version: 20/05/2024”.

Article 3(1) applies it to contracts for the purchase, lease, rent or hire-purchase of road transport vehicles awarded by contracting authorities or contracting entities “in so far as they are under an obligation to apply the procurement procedures” of Directives 2014/24/EU and 2014/25/EU; to public service contracts under Regulation (EC) No 1370/2007 for passenger road transport services above a threshold which Member States define, “not exceeding the applicable threshold value set in Article 5(4) of that Regulation”; and, on the same procurement-procedure condition, to service contracts identified by CPV code in Table 1 of the Annex. It applies only to contracts “for which the call for competition has been sent after 2 August 2021” or, where no call for competition is foreseen, where the procurement procedure commenced after that date. Article 3(2) excludes certain vehicles listed in Regulation (EU) 2018/858 and “vehicles of category M3 other than Class I and Class A vehicles”.

Article 4, point (4)(b) defines a clean M3, N2 or N3 vehicle as one using alternative fuels “as defined in points (1) and (2) of Article 2 of Directive 2014/94/EU”, with exclusions for certain high indirect land-use change-risk fuels and for liquid biofuels, synthetic and paraffinic fuels blended with conventional fossil fuels. EUR-Lex shows that directive as “No longer in force, Date of end of validity: 12/04/2024; Repealed by 32023R1804”, its successor being Regulation (EU) 2023/1804. The consolidated text still points at the repealed directive; Article 25(2) of Regulation (EU) 2023/1804 provides that references to Directive 2014/94/EU “shall be construed as references to this Regulation”, and “shall be read in accordance with the correlation table in Annex IV”. That table pairs Article 2 of the directive with Article 2 of the Regulation at article level only. Points (1) and (2) of Article 2 of the Regulation define “accessibility of data” and “ad hoc price”; the Regulation defines “alternative fuels” in point (4), in terms that differ from the directive’s — its list includes ammonia and divides the fuels into categories. This page does not decide which list now governs Article 4(4)(b) of Directive 2009/33/EC. How Germany’s Clean Vehicles Procurement Act treats paraffinic diesel fuels is set out in HVO and paraffinic diesel.

Article 5(1) sets minimum procurement targets over two reference periods — 2 August 2021 to 31 December 2025, and 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2030 — with per-Member-State figures in Table 3 for light-duty vehicles and Table 4 for heavy-duty. Buses of category M3 appear only in Table 4; category M2 sits with the light-duty vehicles of Tables 2 and 3. The zero-emission bus rule is not in Article 5 but in the footnote to Table 4: “Half of the minimum target for the share of clean buses has to be fulfilled by procuring zero-emission buses”, lowered to one quarter for the first period where more than 80 % of the buses concerned are double-deckers. Under Article 5(6), “where new targets for the period after 1 January 2030 are not adopted, the targets set for the second reference period shall continue to apply” over subsequent five-year periods, and under Article 5(7) Member States “may apply or authorise their contracting authorities or contracting entities to apply higher national targets or more stringent requirements than those referred to in the Annex”.

The targets are addressed to Member States: under Article 5(1) they “shall ensure” that the procurement referred to in Article 3 complies. An operator can itself be a contracting entity buying under Article 3(1)(a): Directive 2014/25/EU counts among contracting entities public undertakings, and entities operating on special or exclusive rights, that pursue an activity it lists (Article 4(1)), and Article 11 lists networks “providing a service to the public in the field of transport by railway, automated systems, tramway, trolley bus, bus or cable”. Under Article 4(3), however, rights granted “by means of a procedure in which adequate publicity has been ensured and where the granting of those rights was based on objective criteria shall not constitute special or exclusive rights”; Annex II, point (e), lists among such procedures public service contracts under Regulation (EC) No 1370/2007 for passenger services by bus, tramway, rail or metro “awarded on the basis of a competitive tendering procedure in accordance with Article 5(3) thereof, provided that its length is in conformity with Article 4(3) or (4) of that Regulation”. For public service contracts and for service contracts listed by CPV code, Article 5(5) of Directive 2009/33/EC provides that “the number of road transport vehicles to be used for the provision of the services covered by each contract shall be taken into account for the purpose of assessing compliance with the minimum procurement targets”.

Manufacturer targets and an award rule: Regulation (EU) 2019/1242

Regulation (EU) 2019/1242 shows as “In force: This act has been changed. Current consolidated version: 10/09/2026”; Articles 3a, 3d and 3e were inserted by Regulation (EU) 2024/1610. Article 3d provides that “for heavy-duty vehicles referred to in the fourth column of the table in point 4.2 of Annex I (‘urban buses’), manufacturers shall comply with the 90 % and 100 % minimum shares of zero-emission heavy-duty vehicles in their fleet of new heavy-duty vehicles in accordance with point 4.3.2 of Annex I”. Point 4.3.2 sets those shares at 90 % for the reporting periods of the years 2030 to 2034 and 100 % from 2035; under Article 3(3), the reporting period of a year runs from 1 July of that year to 30 June of the next. The addressee is the manufacturer: nothing in Article 3d requires an operator to buy, convert or withdraw a vehicle. Article 3e, inserted by the same amendment, is addressed to contracting authorities and contracting entities, which can include an operator that is itself a contracting entity under Directive 2014/25/EU (see the Directive 2009/33/EC section above). They “shall base the award” of public supply contracts for new zero-emission urban buses, and of public service contracts having as their main subject matter the use of such buses, “on the most economically advantageous tender which shall include the best price-quality ratio”. Under Article 3e(2) they “shall use at least two of the following criteria as technical specifications or as award criteria, at least one of which shall relate to the tender’s contribution to the security of supply”, and under Article 3e(3), if that contribution is used as an award criterion, “it shall be given a weighting of between 15 to 40 % of the award criteria”.

Coaches and regional buses sit elsewhere. Article 3a(1) measures reductions against “the average CO2 emissions of the reporting period of the year 2019” and covers new heavy-duty motor vehicles “other than special purpose vehicles, off-road vehicles and off-road special purpose vehicles”. Its 15 % figure for 2025 to 2029 is tied by point (a) to nine sub-groups — 4-UD, 4-RD, 4-LH, 5-RD, 5-LH, 9-RD, 9-LH, 10-RD and 10-LH — which are goods sub-groups; buses and coaches are not among them. They are first reached by point (b), 45 % for all sub-groups other than vocational vehicles for 2030 to 2034, then 65 % for 2035 to 2039 and 90 % from 2040; point 4.3.1 of Annex I sets the factors for the coach and interurban bus sub-groups themselves at 43 %, 64 % and 90 % for the same periods. Recital 36 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1610 states that regional and long-distance buses and coaches “remain subject to the CO2 emissions reduction targets for heavy-duty vehicles”.

What this article does not say

It states no monetary amount, no cost share and no ranking of cost items, because no primary source we could open supports one. It gives no date for smart tachograph retrofitting, because Regulation (EU) No 165/2014 expresses those deadlines as periods.

Regulation (EU) 2023/1804, which repealed Directive 2014/94/EU, was read and left out. Its Article 4 is headed “Targets for recharging infrastructure dedicated to heavy-duty electric vehicles” and opens “Member States shall ensure a minimum coverage of publicly accessible recharging points dedicated to heavy-duty electric vehicles”: the addressee is the Member State. We found no provision imposing a duty on a bus or coach operator.

One further obligation runs on the service rather than on the vehicle or the driver, and is left out above for that reason: Regulation (EU) No 181/2011 on bus and coach passenger rights applies in full only where the scheduled distance of a regular service is 250 km or more.

What remains is a floor whose extent must be established case by case: the EU driving-time limits and the tachograph duty do not reach a regular service whose route does not exceed 50 kilometres, though Article 15 of Regulation (EC) No 561/2006 requires national driving-time rules for its drivers, Article 6(5) has a driver record such driving as other work, and a Member State may extend tachographs to it; the qualification route and the deadline for the first periodic training turn on Member State choices; and the procurement targets differ by Member State, which may also apply higher national targets. Each can be checked against its own instrument before anyone attaches a number to it.