De-Lux lorries fear
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• EEC leaders are worried about a Luxembourg government plan to make it illegal to carry certain goods by road.
The ban, which would break new and dangerous ground in the EEC, applies to both foreign and national carriers.
It is suggested that road hauliers should be barred from transporting coal, coke, petroleum products, building materials, chemicals and a wide range of minerals.
They should be switched to the Grand Duchy's railways which are underused and heavily in deficit.
At a meeting with the EEC Commission, Luxembourg officials claim that increasingly heavy lorry traffic is damaging the road infrastructure and creating a noise problem.
"Why should the country pay twice to cover the railway's losses and repair the roads?" they argued.
Brussels insists that the plan should be dropped as it disturbs the free flow of goods and dislocates the EEC's transport policy.
In the Seventies, West German Transport Minister Georg Leber successfully proposed a similar scheme for switching goods to rail, but political pressure for some action to curb the growth of road transport is likely to persist because of the high cost of building more roads to accommodate the extra tonnage,
An EEC-wide version of the Luxembourg plan was suggested last month in a report to the European Conference of Transport Ministers (CM, June 7).