What is systematic cabotage and how does the cooling-off period stop it?

Systematic cabotage is the continuous performance of domestic haulage in a host country by a non-resident carrier, used as a permanent substitute for domestic haulage rather than as the temporary activity EU Regulation 1072/2009 permits. Before the EU Mobility Package, carriers rotated vehicles from the same fleet to maintain continuous cabotage operations — one vehicle exhausted its 3 operations while another from the same operator entered with a new inbound delivery. The 4-day cooling-off period under EU Regulation 2020/1055 applies to the vehicle and driver combination, and member state enforcement authorities apply it at the operator level as well — an operator cannot substitute a different fleet vehicle to immediately resume cabotage after the previous vehicle's allowance was exhausted.