Hopes of deal on lorry drivers’ hours dashed

Date: 02/12/1999

By Renée Cordes

EU TRANSPORT ministers remain deeply divided over planned new rules to govern the hours worked by Europe's lorry drivers, dashing hopes of a deal on the proposals before the end of this year.

Finnish officials are acknowledging defeat well ahead of a two-day ministerial meeting which begins next Thursday (9 December), admitting that they will have no option but to leave it to Portugal to try to broker an accord once it takes over the Union presidency in January. "It seems to be blockaded," said one. "It will be up to the European Commission and Portugal to think about fresh ideas."

The dispute centres on whether the planned new rules should apply to independent hauliers. Member states such as the UK and Finland with a large number of self-employed drivers who own their own vehicles have repeatedly argued that hundreds of small road-haulage firms would be forced out of business if they were forced to comply with the planned directive. They insist that these 'owner-drivers', who account for up to half the lorry drivers across the EU as a whole, should therefore be excluded from the proposed rules.

But other countries such as France, which has a very strong unionised road-transport sector mainly staffed by employee drivers, insist that the working-time rules must apply to everyone.

Helsinki has produced a series of compromise proposals since taking over the Union presidency in July, such as excluding the self-employed from the proposed restrictions to begin with or leaving it up to member states to decide how to apply the law. But these have failed to break the deadlock.

When the original 1993 working time rules were agreed, EU member states deliberately excluded several 'problem' professions - including oil-rig workers, trainee doctors and lorry drivers - from their scope, deciding instead to negotiate separate regulations for each of these sectors.

The Commission unveiled its proposals for extending the legislation to the 'excluded' sectors last November, paving the way for deals covering a number of professions. However, it was clear that securing agreement on new rules for the road haulage sector would pose the biggest challenge.

"From our point of view there was really no justification to exclude road transport workers," said Sabine Trier, spokeswoman for the Federation of Transport Workers' Unions in the EU. "Since 1993 the road transport sector has been completely liberalised, but this has not been accompanied by harmonised working standards."

As a result, Trier contends, competition among road haulage firms is distorted, with a wide variety of working conditions in different member states.

EU transport ministers remain deeply divided over planned new rules to govern the hours worked by Europe's lorry drivers, dashing hopes of a deal on the proposals before the end of 1999.