According to the European Commission, the establishing of a pan-European road toll payment system is suffering serious delays on Member States. The report adopted by the Commission concludes that the foreseen target date of 8 October 2012 for EETS availability to heavy duty vehicles will not be met.

The European Commission published a report which shows that Member States will need to do more to ensure that the European Electronic Toll Service (EETS) deployment is on track. The report underlines that some problems remain such as insufficient cooperation between the different groups of stakeholders; incomplete national legislative and regulatory frameworks in most Member States, where undertakings that would be willing to provide EETS ("EETS providers") still cannot register officially or lodge complaints against operators managing the tolled roads (the so-called "toll chargers"); delay in the investments needed to make the existing toll equipment compliant with EU legislation; and lack of viable arrangements to finance the testing required by toll chargers (EETS providers have to demonstrate that their equipment can operate on the toll charger's infrastructure). In May 2011, the Parliament Transport Committee also approved a plan for more road safety.

Therefore, the foreseen target date of 8 October 2012 for EETS availability to heavy duty vehicles will not be met, says the report. However, achievements have been made since the adoption of the Commission's decision on the technical specifications of EETS in 2009, such as publication by the Commission of an EETS application guide to help the professional stakeholders, including a list of standards and normative documents of direct relevance to manufacturers and toll system designers; publication by the Member States of their national EETS domains register providing information to potential EETS providers on all the tolled infrastructures on their territory which must be covered by the service; and adoption by the European standards organisations of standards essential to EETS, both for microwave- and satellite-based tolling systems.

In order to establish the EETS as soon as possible, the Commission also offers its technical and financial assistance to facilitate such projects. These early deployment projects, on a regional basis, will be then extended to cover the entire EU at a later stage. Thus, the European Institution invites Member States to deploy EETS at regional level as a first step towards full European interoperability. The aim is to establish cross-border interoperability of electronic toll systems covering at least a limited number of Member States.