Spring. The moment when nature wakes up from its winter sleep. The first flowers appear, the days get longer and the birds fly back and forth to build the most beautiful nest. This year, spring seems to have an even greater significance. For the first time since March 2020, there are no coronagraphs and everything seems to be slowly returning to normal. Restaurants and terraces are full. In the shopping streets, you can sometimes walk over heads. Everyone seems to be going back to work and we see that reflected in the crowds on the roads. Everything seems to have awakened. Even the inspection services.

As corona increasingly took hold of the world, I saw it reflected almost immediately in my daily practice. Hearings were postponed, cancelled or held digitally. Requests for legal assistance shifted from proactive, to reactive, with collection and labor law practices flourishing in particular. Road and business inspections were hardly held, as inspection services were no longer allowed to enter cabs or business premises. For a moment the world seemed to stand still, but soon there came the alternatives.

Due to corona, the advent of the smart tachograph and the changes brought about by the mobility package, new developments in the field of enforcement could not fail to emerge. Looking at Inspectorate for the Environment and Transport (ILT), they are committed to further digitalization of supervision, combined with physical inspections. The minister is particularly committed to making the inspections more efficient and effective. This is done in particular through the development of digital supervision.

In a digital inspection, the ILT requests driver and vehicle data from a transportation company over a three-month period. The company must submit this data digitally via a web form and answer a number of questions. The ILT analyzes the data for compliance with driving and rest periods, after which the company receives a final letter with the results of the analysis. With these results, the company itself can get to work on improving its business processes.

Digital inspections allow the ILT to conduct risk- and information-driven inspections. Companies with a high risk score the ILT inspects more intensively than companies with a low risk score. Companies that comply with the rules then get the ILT less frequent visits.

Road and company inspections will therefore be much more targeted, and I am beginning to see this in daily practice. The companies that are subjected to an inspection today are inspected because there are indications that things are not right. This may be because of previous results of such a digital inspection. It may also be because reports have been made, previous violations have been found, or other inspection services have checked for irregularities.

In such a case, I increasingly see that inspectorates act jointly. More intensive cooperation between inspection services should ensure better enforcement, less administrative burden and also less inconvenience for the supervised party. In the transport and logistics sector, for example, the ILT works a lot with inspection services such as the Dutch Labor Inspectorate (NAI), the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA), Customs and the police.

Increasingly, the entire chain is then scrutinized. In doing so, the inspection services investigate not only the supervised companies, but also other companies in the chain, such as principals, charters and suppliers. In these so-called "chain investigations," enforcement focuses primarily on issues such as compliance with driving and rest period laws, false employment, employee compensation and the use of foreign nationals.

And for good reason. In times of shortage on the labor market, as now, the chance of irregularities in the deployment of drivers is simply greater. Consciously or unconsciously, the jungle of laws and regulations regarding the deployment of drivers means that the inspection services sometimes have their hands full with transport companies that do not comply with these regulations correctly. Whether this is due to the incorrect use of self-employed workers, failure to comply with the Minimum Wage Act or the use of drivers from outside the EU; the ILT and the NAI do not hesitate to impose substantial fines if violations are found. In addition to the necessary financial risks, there is also the fear of reputational damage. After all, nobody wants to appear on the front page of their local newspaper with reports of underpayment and illegally employed drivers. That's bad for business.

This manner of increasingly intensive inspections is causing the focus to shift from the reactive side, to the proactive side. Fortunately, the market is innovating along with this inspection development and we are seeing more and more services and tools that can help transportation companies identify, evaluate and address these risks. 'Compliancy is key'.

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