Those who had to cross the state border with European countries after the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation know what real long queues are like. In queues at the borders with Poland, Hungary, Romania and other countries, not only ordinary Ukrainians who left, fleeing the war or on personal business, but also truck drivers lost their time. Blocking the ports has increased the transport load on the land borders of the country several times.
Often, those who transported Ukrainian products for export or imported important imported products had to wait several days. Protests by transporters from Poland and Hungary, protests by farmers, etc., added to the problems for traffic on the already overcrowded transport arteries. All this had an extremely negative impact on export processes and, as a result, on the country’s economy in general.
However, the situation has somewhat improved over the past year. It was possible to speed up the processes of crossing the border thanks to the eCherga electronic service. The program has been fully operational for a year. As of the end of May, more than 1 million trucks and buses crossed the border using the electronic queue.
Users most actively used the program for crossing the border with Poland (over 550,000 flights). Thanks to the “eCherga” system, more than 180,000 flights were made across the border with Romania, with Moldova – more than 120,000, with Hungary – more than 102,000, and with Slovakia – 54,000.
Since last August, the electronic queue can be used not only by exporters/importers, but also by companies engaged in passenger transportation.
The system allows you to track the traffic of checkpoints, get in line and cross the border at the predicted time. More than 100,000 commercial carriers have already registered in the system. “eCherga” can be used not only by Ukrainian, but also by foreign carriers.
“The indicators could be even higher if it were not for the “spectacles” that we observed from the side of foreign protesters from last November to April of this year. I do not idealize any electronic system, but its presence is still a step forward from the point of view of convenience , than in its absence. A better solution is the significant expansion of border crossings, the modernization of existing and the opening of new crossing points across the state border, the launch of joint border and customs control. The government is currently working on all these issues,” he said Danilo Getmancev, head of the parliamentary committee on finance, tax and customs policy.
