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Blockade by quota
Page 99
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Janus comments
WITH the rapid increase in the number of bilateral agreements international hauliers are running into a difficulty to which they may not find an easy solution. The quota of journeys permitted into some countries is disappointingly small. It shrinks still more when the country has to be used for transit and when the quota includes journeys on own-account as well as for hire or reward.
After the first one or two agreements the prospect seemed good. The Swedish Government was prepared to accept a policy of complete liberalization. There was no limit on the number of journeys from one country to the other and in neither case are operators asked to pay tax. With Jugoslavia a quota waS agreed of 2,500 movements a year on either side. This was well above the expected number of journeys and the likelihood is that the number can be increased without difficulty if it becomes necessary.
Distant prospect The prospect that this necessity will ever arise has become more distant. To reach Jugoslavia the British International operator must pass through several other countries. If they follow the trend of more recent bilateral agreements he will need several permits instead of one and will find it increasingly hard to make up a full set.
Western Germany lies across his route to many destinations unless he is prepared to make a long detour. The agreement with Germany which at present allows only 43 British vehicles with permits to be in the country at any one time will be modified next October to allow a total of 2,800 journeys a year by hauliers. Out of this total will have to be taken permits required for goods in transit.
Useful exceptions are made in addition to own-account transport. They include furniture removals by specialists, the carriage of goods intended for fairs and exhibitions, of works of art and of animals not destined for the slaughterhouse. In spite of this the quota is clearly, even at this stage, not going to be sufficient to meet requests from British hauliers.
For German hauliers there is not the same problem. Their journeys to the UK are not as frequent as the traffic in the opposite direction. Nor are they likely to require permits for through journeys.
In this sense the balance of trade is always going to be in favour of the Continental country. Two other recent agreements have been with France and Italy. The French seem more liberal than the Germans in that they will allow 6,000 journeys a year with an additional quota of 2,000 trips a year on piggy-back transport. There are similar exemptions to those given by Germany with the important proviso that the French do not exclude carriage on own-account.
British vehicles in transit use France much more often than Germany and the drain on the French quota is to that extent more serious in spite of the concession that British semi-trailers not entering France direct from the UK may be counted against the quota of the third country in which the tractor is registered. Except in these circum stances and unless operators are prepared to take the long sea voyage their journeys to Spain must take them through France and they cannot reach Italy without losing an extra permit to at least one other country on the way.
The Italian quota of 2,400 journeys a year means the issue, when other countries' quotas are brought in, of twice that number of permits. In this case also the usual exemptions do not include operators carrying their .own goods. The sorry tale continues with a maximum of 42 vehicles at any time in Austria. The agreement with Rumania is on more liberal lines and includes relief from vehicle taxation. But the volume of traffic going to Eastern Europe in British vehicles is small in comparison with the Western European traffic and is likely to remain so.
Some way ought to be found of lifting the blockade. The initial mistake may have been in adhering too closely to the pattern of bilateral agreements which had been found satisfactory between two Continental countries. The very wording of the agreements seems out of place at certain points. French, Germans and Italians alike beneficently proclaim that they will allow free of quota British vehicles the laden weight of which, including the trailer if there is one, does not exceed 6,000 kilograms. Here seems yet another world opening up for the light van excluded from the, licensing provisions of the Transport Act 1968.
Entertaining Net The French have the most entertaining list of exemptions. It includes the carriage of bees and fish fry—items no doubt exported from the UK in enormous quantities—and (more mysteriously) of refuse and sewage. These last items must represent an even more serious problem than we had supposed if they have to be sent into Europe as a last desperate means of getting rid of them. Why the French should welcome them it is impossible even to hazard a guess.
It may be unusual to reproach civil servants for acting too hastily. But a longer delay might have been an advantage if the other countries could have been persuaded to agree. Their own anxiety to reach a settlement seems even more incomprehensible. This is especially the case with the three countries, France, Germany and Italy, where difficulty is most likely to arrive.
All three are members of the Common Market, Acting in conformity with the Treaty of Rome they have been trying for several years to eliminate, progressively if not at once, the quotas for international road transport within the Community. Ultimately, France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries would be able to send vehicles freely into each other's territory. The only quotas then would be with the outside world.
For some time Britain's application has been lodged to join the Common Market. If and when it is accepted no doubt the UK will join the campaign to outlaw the quota. In the meantime it might have been appropriate to have negotiated—or at any rate attempted to negotiate—a single bilateral agreement with the Community.
If this seemed novel it would merely have reflected the situation. Until the coming of the roll-on/roll-off vessel British road transport was effectively isolated. The new development brought it closer to Europe but the Channel and the North Sea still form a different kind of barrier from the frontiers on the mainland.
Vital ferries The ferries are useful to Europe or to certain European countries. They are becoming vital to the UK. The hagglers on the British side are in a poor negotiating position. They want more than they are able to offer. They should perhaps have realized that in this situation the. traditional tripfor-trip settlement which had worked well for a generation or more on the mainland did not travel overseas very well even over so narrow a stretch of water as the Channel.
If in any particular case the negotiators on the other side were not as enlightened as they were in Sweden a more determined effort might have been made to use a different kind of counter. In any confrontation the UK would require more permits than the other country. Presumably British operators and users would have been prepared to pay for this imbalance in some way.
A new approach might have been more successful in Brussels where the administrators themselves are grappling with the novelty of a supranational authority. Sooner or later the Six will have to make up their minds on their collective relationship with the UK. It would have been a good omen if the new regulations for operators' licensing could have contained a clause exempting all vehicles from the Common Market as well as from Sweden.
Precedents are not lacking. The proposed International Customs Transit Convention, it is hoped, will at some stage be applied by groups of countries forming ICT regions rather than by individual countries. The very names of the European Economic Community and the European Free Trade Area symbolize the desire to dispense with frontiers at least as artificial barriers to trade.