• Readers who regularly haul loads abroad will find nothing
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unusual or shocking in the reports which we carry in our international feature this week. Indeed, many will know tales of obstruction, inefficiency and corruption of such a magnitude as to make our experiences seem like Sunday-school picnics— but, for those who have to deal with little more than surly loading-bay attendants or obstructive service-area guards in Britain, the details of continental haulage might come as a nasty surprise.
For one group of people, the revelations that even relatively trouble-free journeys are as awkward as they are, should come as a prickly conscience reminder. Those people are Britain's and Europe's legislators who allow this sort of nonsense to continue. Every European government must share the blame for the chaotic, obstructive, non-unified, corrupt state of inter-country goods transfer.
The trouble is that, blame accepted or not, none of the European governments is going to do much about this state of affairs unless and until they are forced to by some grand design of unification. Given the depth of corruption and in-growing nasty practices at all European borders, however, it is unlikely that even the great harmonisation of 1992 will work wonders. There are too many "jobsworths", too many bureaucrats, too many corrupt customs officials in place for that.