Drive to harmonise lorry bans

Date: 05/03/1998

By Chris Johnstone

MEASURES to end EU-wide confusion caused by differing national restrictions on lorry movements will be put to the European Commission next week.

Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock will ask his colleagues to support proposals to harmonise rules governing the timing of weekend bans on lorry movements, and which trucks should be covered by overnight restrictions because they make too much noise.

Under the plans, individual countries would be free - as they are now - to decide whether to impose such bans. If they did so, weekend bans could run from 7am to 10pm on Sundays, although member states would be allowed to extend the hours if they put forward good reasons, and overnight bans would be permitted as long as they targeted only the noisiest lorries.

The Commissioner is confident that EU governments will approve his proposals, probably in June. “We do not expect any big problems because they were asking us for this in the first place and we have tried to take on board their views,” said his spokeswoman.

The move should go some way to answering the demands of haulage companies for some uniformity in the current patchwork of national restrictions across the EU.

These have created confusion for the industry and have often resulted in drivers being caught at borders by national curfews.

The tiny Duchy of Luxembourg almost turned into a parking place for the continent's lorries last year when hundreds of drivers were held up at the country's frontier with France. They were caught out after Paris widened its weekend ban to cover empty lorries returning home as well as those on outward journeys.

“There is a lot of confusion at the moment on when bans apply and this is creating additional delays,” said a Commission official.

The Commission's decision not to question governments' right to impose lorry bans will, however, disappoint those looking for a firmer stand against their existence and proliferation.

The 'light framework' of rules is likely to force changes in the timing of weekend bans in Germany and Austria. These two countries often anticipate other countries' prohibitions on Sunday truck movements by enforcing their own bans from Saturday evening.

The criteria proposed by the Commission to determine which lorries should be affected by overnight bans could result in around half the EU's truck fleet being kept off the streets at night.

Officials say most big and medium-sized haulage firms could cope with such a ban quite easily by juggling with their fleets so that quieter lorries were used at night, adding that the number of vehicles covered by any ban would fall by around 10&percent; a year as new models replaced old.

They say a clear set of rules for restrictions on noise grounds should stop the spread of blunter and broader overnight bans, which would probably have the perverse effect of increasing daytime congestion and pollution.