F OR fir too long commercial vehicle operators have been effectively
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excluded from the transport law iflaking process in Europe. The politicians and bureaucrats have had it all their own way, hut they have made it abundantly clear that they cannot be trusted to do a decent job on their own. Sonic are now even prepared to admit it.
In Strasbourg last week Foris Karamitsos, one of the more realistic of the EEC Commission's bureaucrats, was distressed to hear Renault's engineers dare to suggest that an overall length of 16.7111 is required for an efficient 44-tonne GCW articulated vehicle for the year 2000. "It has taken the EEC 25 years to agree on a harmonised length limit of 15.5m,he said, implying that now this must be set ill stone.
'[here is nothing sacrosant about 15.5m, 38 tonnes, 40 tonnes, or any other weight or dimensional limit dreamed up by politicians with little or no understanding of the practicalities of road transport. The fact that it has taken 25 years to decide on any limit is downright shameful.
Any legal constraint on the construction and use of vehicles can be determined quickly following the right sort of consultation. And it should always be on the basis simply of ensuring that the efficient transport of goods or people remains safe.
European operators now desperately need a single respected representative body to drive that message home again and again in the corridors of power in Brussels and Strasbourg. They need an equivalent to what the vehicle manufacturers have in the CCMC (Comite des Constructeurs d'Automobiles du Marche Commune), an organisation which is always consulted before laws are passed which seriously affect its members.
The European Transport Maintenance Council has the potential to become the body that operators need. It already has in its ranks people of the right calibre. People like Roger Denniss, Malcolm Filsell, Paul Spaenjers, Michael Kubenz and its new chairman, Frank Lem°.
Moreover, in its three-year existence ETMC has already shown that the sluggardly pace at which the EEC works need not apply to all European organisations. And it has the vital support of national bodies like the Institute of Road Transport Engineers and the Freight Transport Association, though apparently not yet the rather slower moving Road Haulage Association.
ETMC should now urgently seek the support of more small-fleet operators and prove Co them that it can do more than just organise all annual conference. And the next conference programme should not be padded out as this year's was with shallow papers on elementary subjects. If ETMC is to become the mouthpiece of European operators it must demonstrate that it has some teeth.