SPIRIT OF 1992
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• If West Germany gets away with its decision to stall the liberalisation of the EEC road transport industry by imposing a tax on every foreign truck that crosses its border the spirit of 1992 will be killed stone dead. Not so long ago Belgium mounted a similar road usage tax. That plan was aborted following howls of protest from other EEC members states — with Germany protesting as loudly as any.
The tax aims to soften the impact of free competition on West Germany's carefully protected road haulage industry, and perhaps to force more freight onto a rail network drowning in debt. Whatever its motive the tax is blatantly discriminatory and therefore contravenes a 1965 EEC law which forbids the levying of road taxes on vehicles already being taxed in other member states as an unfair form of double taxation.
Transport Secretary Paul Channon has rightly rejected the idea of retrospective transit taxes on existing roads: now the Community must force the Germans to do likewise.