NationalPlatform.Org

HOW ABOUT THE TRUCK DRIVERS?

by Dr Richard North from EU REFERENDUM  blog, 22 August 2005

Well, if the accountants won't do it, and the farmers are too busy to get on
their tractors and drive to Brussels, how about the truck (or lorry, as we
used to say) drivers?

Having had to weather the increased fuel costs and the insanity of the
working time directive, they are, according to the Transport News Network,
now bitching about foreign truck drivers.

More specifically, they have noted that EU enlargement has created a
"bonanza" for Eastern European lorries on UK Roads. Lorry operators from the
ten accession states joining in May 2004 have doubled their traffic volumes
in the UK, says the Department for Transport.

Of the new EU member states, 31 percent of the traffic from the new member
states is from Poland - up 36 percent in the last year. Czechoslovakia and
Hungary account for 25 percent each - up 23 percent and 87 percent
respectively since Q2 2004. Overall traffic volume from accession states has
increased 3.5 times since 2003.

The figures also confirm that the dwindling share of traffic undertaken by
UK-based international hauliers has stabilised. In 1996, UK hauliers
accounted for half of all international traffic. However, the combination of
growing low cost foreign competition from Eastern Europe, and Sterling's
appreciation in value against the Euro, meant that by 2004 the market share
of UK-based hauliers had fallen to 25 per cent.

Foreign trucks now represent some ten per cent of the maximum weight
vehicles operating on UK roads - there are around 10,000 foreign lorries on
UK roads every day of the week.

The point, of course, is that while UK operators pay through the nose for
road tax and bear some of the highest diesel costs in Europe, none of these
vehicles - or the almost ten percent from outside of the EU - make any
payment to operate on UK roads.

Simon Chapman, Chief Economist of the Freight Transport Association says
"International road haulage is an extremely tough environment for UK
hauliers. No sooner had the problems created by Sterling's exchange rates
begun to abate then lower cost competition from Eastern Europe put further
downward pressure on rates. UK operators cannot operate indefinitely on
wafer thin margins just to keep the wheels of their truck fleets turning."

If we were an independent nation, we could perhaps levy a charge on every
foreign vehicle entering the country - as do some other countries - but this
is regarded as "discriminatory" by the EU and thus prohibited.

In an attempt to level the playing field, the government did attempt to
bring in a lorry road user charging scheme, based on satellite monitoring,
applicable to both domestic and foreign lorries, but this ran into technical
problems and was abandoned, leaving no solution to an obviously unfair
situation.

Perhaps, therefore, the lorry drivers can be prevailed to rise up. They
could give lifts to the accountants, and bankers, and could be joined by the
farmers in their tractors, to say nothing of the slaughterhouse owners, the
fishermen, the airline pilots, the junior doctors (who cannot now get
training places because of the working time directive), the electrical and
electronic manufacturers, the garment retailers, chemical manufacturers, the
military, taxpayers, consumersŠ

Come to think of it, it there anyone left?  Why don't we all rise up?

Filed under: EU Economy, EU Enlargement & Integration | Tagged: truck drivers |