French legislation allows the authorities to prohibit foreign transport companies from performing cabotage on national territory if they commit serious infringements specifically linked to this activity. At the start of December 2025 the measure was applied to four hauliers: one Lithuanian, one Slovak, one Romanian and one Bulgarian. The first three received the injunction from the Centre-Val de Loire Prefecture, while the fourth was sanctioned by the Toulouse Dreal.
On 1 December 2025 the prefect of the Centre-Val de Loire region announced a one-year cabotage ban in France (until 1 December 2026) for the Lithuanian operator Hoptrans, the Romanian Kpo Trade Invest and the Slovak Torello TN SK. The infringements concern breaches of driving and rest-time rules and irregular cabotage practices. According to the document published in the region’s Recueil des Actes Administratifs, Kpo Trade Invest was cited in seven reports documenting twelve infringements between February 2023 and January 2025, including cabotage operations carried out without a preceding international delivery, in breach of Articles 8(1) and 8(2) of Regulation (EC) 1072/2009. Hoptrans committed 35 infringements between April 2024 and March 2025, while Torello TN SK was cited for fourteen violations between March 2024 and March 2025.
On 14 February 2025 the French daily Le Monde published an article on Torello TN SK, the Slovak branch of the Italian group, reporting that the company had replaced French subcontracted hauliers working for Kuehne & Nagel on behalf of the retailer Action by using Romanian and Serbian drivers. The article also states, with a photograph, that every evening and at weekends around thirty lorries were parked in front of Action’s Belleville-en-Beaujolais distribution platform, with drivers sleeping in their cabs.
The case was also covered by the French monthly Les Routiers, which wrote in its March 2025 issue that thirty French drivers had supposedly been replaced by fifteen Romanians and fifteen Serbians. The article adds that Dreal inspectors had sanctioned vehicles operated by Torello TN SK for illegal cabotage and drivers resting in their cabs, while the French administration had granted forty licences to Torello France. In addition, a Dreal inspection on 6 March 2025 in Belleville-en-Beaujolais identified seven violations, issuing fines totalling 17,500 euros.
The fourth company was sanctioned by the Toulouse Dreal with a six-month cabotage ban, also starting on 1 January 2025. It concerns the Bulgarian operator Petko Angelov, based in Plovdiv. The same company had already been penalised in May 2019 by the prefect of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region with an eleven-month cabotage ban for repeated infringements committed between 2014 and 2017.
The Centre-Val de Loire Dreal is particularly active in tackling illegal cabotage. According to a press release issued in March 2025, more than a third of the fourteen cabotage bans in force nationwide had been imposed by the region’s Prefect. Road cabotage in France is governed by Regulation (EC) 1072/2009 and by the Transport Code, which allows a foreign haulier to perform a maximum of three cabotage operations within seven days of unloading an incoming international transport, with a mandatory four-day cooling-off period before cabotage can resume in the same Member State. Penalties may include immobilisation of the vehicle, a fine of up to 15,000 euros and a cabotage ban of up to one year in cases of repeat offences or serious infringements.
