On a stage in Belgrade, in front of the people who keep the Balkans' freight moving, Transport Community Director Linkaits went straight to the point. "The performance of the entire logistics chain matters more than that of any individual section," he emphasised at the Cargo Conference in the Serbian capital. It is the kind of line that sounds self-evident — until a truck that made up time on a motorway loses it all at a single border post, and a corridor's entire sales pitch collapses with it.
Linkaits called for a shared approach to developing transport corridors, one that brings ministries and customs authorities around the same table instead of leaving every country to polish its own stretch of asphalt, rail or quay. For Serbia, the message cuts both ways: a country positioned where regional routes intersect stands to gain more than most from corridors that behave as systems — and has more to lose from corridors that behave as a string of national bottlenecks.
The timing gives his words extra weight. A sharp drop in new-car sales in China's domestic market has produced negative consequences at the global level even as Chinese automakers actively increase exports to other countries — freight that must flow through somebody's ports, borders and corridors. Meanwhile, the EU's 'Made in Europe' push is raising costs and competitiveness concerns among global auto suppliers, with factories in Serbia sitting squarely in the recalibration. In that environment, the quality of a logistics chain stops being a technical detail and starts being a competitive weapon.
