No Agreement On E.E.C. Programme
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FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
THE idea of an agreed, all-embracing action programme for transport in the E.E.C. has virtually been abandoned, at least for the moment. So great and so obvious were the differences of view among the national Ministers of the E.E.C. Council when they met in Brussels on Friday that they did not even try to reach an acceptable compromise. Instead, in an attempt to get things moving after nearly a year of deadlock and indecision, they took the advice of the Permanent Representatives Committee and referred the whole issue back to the Commission together with the comments and viewpoints of the Ministers as stated at previous meetings of the Council.
It now seems that the Commission is, in lieu of an overall action programme, going to submit transport proposals piecemeal to the Council, after trying to accommodate the various Ministers' national views, The first series of these proposals, dealing mainly with road transport, is expected to be with the Council before Easter. Transport liberalization, market organization and basic harmonization are being worked on now, and proposals for these are due before the end of May; the Council meets again on June 14.
'The chances of agreement on a definite programme for transport rules were known to be more slender than was the case a year ago; much of the will to solve problems on a Community basis has evaporated and there are more, rather than fewer, points on which national delegations have taken up inflexible attitudes. And new, though as yet secret, disagreements about the action programme have arisen.
Among the more difficult points are
Holland's stand against the other five on inland waterway arrangements; Italy's reservations about the linking of transittraffic quotas to the expansion of trade; Holland's reluctance to accept the forkedrates plan for the railways; the general lack of agreement about how wide the forks should be for road haulage rates; and French and German opposition to the proposed road vehicle weights and dimensions figures.