Eurocrats team up on harmonisation
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• A blueprint for cabotage and harmonisation in Europe's haulage market is to be drawn up by European Commissioners this summer.
A Commission transport official said on Monday that the proposal, which goes before nnnisters early next year, would be a compromise between simple cabotage — retaining tax differences between countries — and outright harmonisation.
Complete harmonisation — where every European operator would work under the same weight limits, taxes and regulations — was "unthinkable" by 1994, the transport directorate's principal administrator Dick Van Vreckem told a FrancoBritish haulage conference.
Instead a half-way measure was likely, with an end to permit quotas and "harmonisation of certain rules", he said. Fuel tax, VED and road tolls all still needed to be harmonised, and this would require 'considerable effort from all member states".