Starting from a civil and fiscal legal background Wouter van Haaften has been involved in Road User Charges at the Dutch Ministry of Finance since 1993. He has lived through all attempts to introduce RUC in the Netherlands. First of all, he negotiated the Eurovignette Treaty that led to the introduction of the vignette in the Netherlands in 1995. In 2001-2002 he was member of the steering committee for the Dutch KM Charge on behalf of the tax administration. In 2003 Germany stepped out of the Eurovignette and he became responsible for taking over the collective part of the Eurovignette system by the Dutch tax Administration. In 2006 and 2007 he led the preparations for a new electronic Eurovignette, introducing one single service provider system for all five Member States.

In 2007 he left the civil service to become a researcher and consultant operating on the interfaces between market and government, between ICT/organization and government and between policy making and eventual operations. Currently he is a consultant in the field of RUC and Intelligent Transport Systems and a senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute, a Cooperation between the Faculty of Law of the University of Amsterdam and TNO, concentrating on the legal aspects of vehicle automation and in-vehicle data. Furthermore, he is associated partner at Hooghiemstra&Partners, strategic legal consultancy.