eFTI covers transport documents. It does not cover the proof that the operator carrying out the transport is authorised to do so. Community Authorisations — and, where the driver is a third-country national, Driver Attestations — are required under Regulations (EC) No 1071/2009 and 1072/2009 and still travel as secure paper certificates in the cab. Transport Malta’s pilot tests whether that proof can move into eFTI.
The gap has a real enforcement cost. Paper certificates cannot by themselves guarantee that no forged certificates are in circulation, and an inspector has no reliable way to confirm that a haulier is genuinely established and authorised. Transferring an authorisation to a specific vehicle is also slow: today the paper often has to be couriered to wherever the truck happens to be.
The pilot therefore works backwards from what verification requires: which additional datasets eFTI needs in order to carry authorisations and attestations; what operations issuing authorities must perform to generate them and what economic operators must do to attach them to transport data on an eFTI platform; and which security features are needed to authenticate the certificates, including GDPR and security considerations.
