COMMENT
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WORKING WEEK WON'T WORK
Like "The innocent and the beautiful", hauliers have "...no enemy but time". As WB Yeats wasn't a truck operator we had to put that last bit in ourselves. Celebrated Irish poets notwithstanding, it's significant that Neil Kinnock's plan to apply the dreaded EU maximum 48-hour working week to road transport has run into a brick wall. Now there's a surprise. Most EU countries, including a somewhat cautious UK, feel that a blanket 48-hour limit would be difficult to apply. That has to be the understatement of the week. The Germans reckon it would make them uncompetitive against Eastern European countries. And judging by growing reports of cheap Turkish drivers being used to drive UK-registered trucks around Eastern Europe they've probably got every reason to be worried. Even countries which support a 48-hour week have doubts about effectively enforcing the new rules. The EU already suffers from enough variation in the application of existing regs on tachos, speeding, vehicle maintenance and overloading without introducing yet another rule that won't be made to stick. If it is adopted, no doubt Britain will enforce it—as it does with just about every law that comes out of Brussels— while other EU states continue to treat EU legislation like children at a Pick 'n' Mix counter: some of this, some of that and none of the other. Does anyone seriously think that the hours rules are enforced in Spain or Italy as effectively as they are in the UK? And when was the last time you saw a vehicle roadworthiness check in Greece? Or a weighbridge in operation in France? The European road transport industry doesn't need any more regulations. What it does needs is rigorous, and above all consistent application of the rules we already have.