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CLEAN COMPETITION

17th February 1994
Page 27
Page 27, 17th February 1994 — CLEAN COMPETITION
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

The British may well have invented the acronym of N1MBY for "not in my backyard", but judging by rumblings from the Dutch road haulage industry the idea's caught on in the Netherlands.

According to Ruud Van Yperen, president of the car and truck section of the Dutch equivalent of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders: "The Netherlands must ban dirty trucks," His argument goes like this: 'There's no point in introducing strict (EC) regulations in the Netherlands governing exhaust gases.. if East European trucks which do not comply with any rec uirements at all are allowed into the country witiout let or hindrance...On environmental grounds the Dutch, or rather the European authorities, should ban the admission of trucks which do not comply with European regulations." Is this a case of protectionism hiding beneath the Green umbrella? The truth is there's an even better reason for keeping East European hauliers out of our Western European backyard— their costs are so low that they could decimate the European road haulage industry. This has not esca the Dutch, even though their hauliers are among the most professional in Europe. "Compared with the majority of their foreign counterparts Dutch drivers are expensive," says Van Yperen. "As the economy is in a poor state internationally, shippers in Europe are increas ingly inclined to use hauliers who work more cheaply because of their low wage costs," The figures speak for themselves. On average a Dutch HGV driver costs his employer around 235,000 a year; the rate for a Polish driver is less than 211,000. No wonder Continental shippers want to use them, But are UK hauliers facing the same threat? In the run up to 1992 the TGWU warned that hordes of non-EU drivers would be crossing the Channel to take the bread out of the mouths of plucky British hauliers. We've yet to see them, but whatever has motivated the Dutch protests the European Union has every right to tell its former Communist bloc neighbours that if they want to operate goods vehicles in EU states they'll have to abide by EU laws, including those which limit what should come out of a truck's exhaust pipe. Ironically, a number of European truck manufacturers have begun talking about building two ranges of trucks for the Future: hitech models for Western European operators, and no-frills, low-cost versions for their Eastern counterparts.

But it would be an act of environmental vandalism to build trucks that don't meet EU emission laws simply because those laws don't exist in Poland, Czechoslovakia or the CIS. And manufacturers must ensure that the price of East European models doesn't underwrite further unfair competition throughout the EU. After all, since the Berlin Wall came down, we all share the same backyard.


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