Hauliers held up on route to integration

Date: 03/10/1996

By Mark Turner

TROUBLE is brewing over Central and Eastern European hauliers' access to EU roads.

The International Road Transport Union (IRU) claims lorry drivers from the CEECs are being held up for hours at borders before being allowed to cross on to western roads.

“At the German-Czech border, it is not unusual to have to wait up to ten to 20 hours to cross, with peak waiting times as high as 24 or even 48 hours,” states a document presented to the European Commission by IRU.

“This might be alright if they could leave their trucks,” added a spokesman for the union, “but they have to keep moving every ten minutes or so. This is inhuman.”

The issue is also causing concern among farmers in the CEECs because of the risk it poses to the quality of their agricultural produce, which can deteriorate very quickly, even in refrigerated containers.

Waiting times are just one of a growing list of complaints from CEEC transport companies, which feel they are getting a raw deal from their western neighbours.

Before they join the Union, the ten applicant countries of Central and Eastern Europe will be expected to comply with - or at least show significant progress towards - the Community acquis.

In the transport sector, that will mean substantial changes to weights and measures (ie maximum lorry weights, widths and lengths), and a wide-scale clean-up of fleets to make them more environmentally friendly.

The CEECs feel that as their firms are making significant investments to gear up for European integration, the EU should show its support by granting them easier access to its highways.

That also includes access to the Union's cabotage system, which allows EU hauliers on their way home after making a delivery to pick up goods rather than return empty-handed - a practice which works, as one expert put it, “rather like a taxi-rank system”.

But CEEC hauliers face stiff opposition from western European hauliers who are anxious to protect themselves from increased competition.

IRU vice-president Dethmer Kielman acknowledges that the cabotage system is under considerable pressure already from firms within the EU, without adding another source of grief. He therefore concedes that any extension of the system should be made very gradually.

There are also fears that without tighter supervision, the number of illegal operations by eastern hauliers within the EU will increase.

“You cannot expect eastern operators to turn down opportunities when they arise,” said one expert.

Nor will legitimate traffic decrease. “By the year 2005, east-west traffic, currently accounting for 73 million tonnes, might amount to as much as 175 million tonnes, with the road transport's share of freight rising from 30&percent; to 62&percent; of all goods carried,” points out the NEA Institute in the Netherlands.

EU transport ministers will meet their CEEC counterparts today (3 October), as part of the ongoing structured dialogue between the Union and its applicants. But while the cabotage issue may be discussed on the margins, officials do not expect any great results from the meeting.

“I doubt if there will be any substantial discussion at this stage,” said one Brussels diplomat.

That in itself is not surprising. After all, the structured dialogue is becoming somewhat notorious for being unstructured - and without much dialogue.

But some officials believe that a number of existing EU member states may have hidden motives for avoiding difficult topics.

“Europe's ministers are speaking with forked tongues,” suggested one. “On the one hand, they are opening their arms in welcome, but secretly they would rather keep the eastern Europeans out.”

Western mistrust was highlighted in July when the 'TIR' cross-border transit system was extended to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

The furore which this move provoked led Internal Market Commissioner Mario Monti to promise that there would be no further extensions of the system until tighter controls were put in place.

Issues to be discussed by EU and CEEC transport ministers include strategies for a 'comprehensive, coherent and efficient rail and combined transport system', and fair-pricing systems, in the light of the Commission's recent Green Paper on the subject.

The Commission will also report on developments in the 'TINA' initiative, aimed at integrating EU and CEEC networks.

But more controversial issues will not be on the agenda, with some officials suggesting that the dialogue was never intended to broach more difficult subjects.

“It is not meant to be controversial, it is merely meant to be a way to include applicants in discussions before they accede,” said one, adding: “It is probably premature to start on these issues anyway. We have not even agreed on the general issues of accession yet.”

Peter Krausz of IRU regrets the lack of progress in these meetings and says that his organisation is pressing for more substantive discussions.

“We see no tangible results from these consultations. We are trying to influence our organisations to pressure their ministries to broach these issues,” he said.

But little real progress is expected before the Commission's Directorate-General for transport (DGVII) has examined the relevant answers to a 165-page questionnaire completed by the CEECs in July. The preliminary results of this exercise are not expected until the end of this year.

Until then, empty rhetoric will continue to dominate relations between the Union and its would-be members to the east.