Plans to introduce road pricing in the Netherlands, which would involve motorists paying an extra tax on every kilometre driven, have been put on the back burner, transport minister Camiel Eurlings told MPs on Monday evening.

Eurlings said it would not be responsible to introduce the system from 2011 because the risks attached to it are ‘too great’.
The introduction of a kilometre tax was one of the main plans in the 2007 coalition agreement. But that agreement stated the cost of introducing road pricing could not exceed 5% of the total proceeds, the Volkskrant points out on Tuesday. Similar systems elsewhere, such as in London, cost around 40% of income to run.
Eurlings did not go into details about the reasons for delaying the project, apart from saying they were ‘complex’. It would ‘not be responsible’ to continue with the speedy introduction of road pricing for lorries by 2011, the ministry said in a statement.