TRANSPORT IN THE COMMON MARKET By H. Brian Cottee
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Common policy what progress?
An, transport operator who did a Rip van Winkle when Britain was denied entry to the Common Market in 1963, and who now awoke at the Prime Minister's clarion call and plunged again into the complexities of EEC transport policy, might find r it difficult to believe that he had been to sleep. Familiar Market problems of 1963 (and indeed of 1962) remain largely unresolved and all the confident target dates in the 1962 action programme for transport have been overrun without implementation of a single major piece of legislation.
This state of affairs does not reflect inactivity. It is simply that activity in plenty has not been followed by corresponding agreement and, in particular, proposals by the EEC Commission which have been approved by the Economic and Social Committee and commended by the European Parliament have foundered on the rock of the Council of Ministers.
In October this year the Commission member for transport, M. Lambert Schaus, expressing bitter regret at the lack of determination that the Six had shown in pressing forward a common transport policy, remarked that on questions of major transport importance at both national and international level the member States had "continued to act as though the Community did not exist".
The set-up
To understand how this has come about one needs to have some idea of how the EEC is organized. To pursue the objects of a European Economic Community as set out in the Treaty of Rome, a nine-man Commission (appointed by a Council of Ministers) was set up to implement Treaty aims and to formulate proposals for discussion and decision by the bodies with the powers to do so. The Commission heads its own supranational civil service body. The Council of Ministers is composed of one minister appointed by each national government of the Six and has the real power of decision, though it must take account of the pressures of the Commission on the executive side and of the European Parliament (EP) and the Economic and Social Committee (ESC) on political and other fronts, The members of the EP are elected by their respective national parliaments, while the ESC represents industry, trade unions, and consumers.
The Parliament (which has little executive power) has its own transport committee and the Commission is assisted by a committee of permanent representatives who serve to carry the national views into the non-national workings of the Commission when it is drawing up proposals or directives for the Council of Ministers to endorse or reject.
This concentration of actual power into the hands of six men appointed directly by their own governments has often resulted in confrontation rather than compromise on the transport front.
The breakdown As recently as October 28, COMMERCIAL MOTOR reported the deadlock on a Community rates system which had been intended as a cornerstone in transport policy. Now agreement on rates has been relegated from a prerequisite to a postscript, and other lines of agreement are to be sought first. But two of the measures intended to create controlled conditions for transport. and thus lessen the importance of a Community rates structure in achieving fair competition, are: a check on transport capacity available to each member country, and a safeguard system to allow member States to vary Community transport regulations (notably on rates) in conditions which they feel threaten their economy or their transport structure. And there is no guarantee that agreement on these two measures will be any easier to reach than on rates themselves.
The other principal items for control of the "transport market" which the Commission arid the Permanent Representatives have been invited to prepare are: rules on fair competition (to prevent improper use of a dominant position and cut-throat rivalry): provisions for controlling entry into professional transport; co-ordination of technical, financial and social conditions of competition between one State and another; and the fair apportionment of infrastructure costs among the users. Examination of most of these points has been going on since 1962/3.
Apart from differences on details there is a fundamental gulf between the authoritarian. railway-influenced views of Germany and France and the liberal road/waterwayorientated attitudes of the Benelux group (Belgium. Holland, Luxembourg) while Italy often seems the triOst pliant partner. December 6 is the next date for a Council meeting on transport and there is little hope that it will result in major progress on any of the principal measures.
The programme Despite the deadlock, work on rates is not dead. Nothing has overturned the June 1965 decision to establish a compulsory forked rates system for road and rail transport in which (except for certain private contract work) international goods traffic would be carried at rates falling between the upper and lower limits of published tariffs with a 20 per cent spread between the brackets. This would initially apply for three years to through traffic and would then apply also to national traffic, except for consignments of less than five tons over small mileages. Alongside this, inland waterway traffic would be governed by a "reference" rates system involving publication of rates only if they were above or below the limits of the forks, the Council of Ministers and
the member States would have power to apply this reference system to some road and rail transport—and it is the application of reference rates which has really caused the recent deadlock.
Only on one front has transport progressed to the point where unified legislation seems possible soon: licence quotas—and even here the plans are far behind schedule. Briefly, Community licences will enable a haulier to operate freely between Common Market states. In the first year of a four-year trial (during which bilateral licences would continue to operate) France and Germany would have 210 Community licences each, Holland 176, Italy 142, Belgium 118 and Luxembourg 24. This total of 880 should have applied in 1966, as the first year, but the breakdown in rates discussions seems to have postponed even the year-late application of the plan. Second, third and fourth-year licence quota totals will be 1,480; 1,930; and 2,380.
Weights and dimensions of vehicles have progressed to the point where 16 tons gross for two-axle vehicles, 22 tons for three-axle, 36 tons , for attics and 38 tons for lorry /trailer combinations have been agreed in principle although some quite different figures apply in member States (40 tons for combinations in Benelux, for example) and the European Parliament wants a 38-ton limit for artics. A generally accepted 10-ton single-axle and I3-ton tandem-axle limit is confused by high-level pressure for 13 and 16 tons respectively for these limits. These higher figures would apply initially only on international Community highways—but Holland, Germany and Italy say that the I3-ton limit is too much even for their main routes.
But if actual legislative progress is slow, there are many topics under discussion and many measure* in the pipeline. As reported only last week in CM, the Commission has produced proposals for shorter unified working hours for professional drivers as part of the plan to get common working conditions in transport; the Council has been asked to authorize an inquiry into road haulage wages as one of the basic elements of social and transport policy; while a few proposals on technical items such as brake standards and type approval have been drawn up.
The disappointment It is a pity that some of the important but less contentious items intended to iron out unfairness and inconsistency ("harmonize") have not been more quickly agreed, so as to give encouragement to all concerned in trying to create a common transport structure. But even such commendable measures as regulations to abolish double taxation on vehicles used on cross-border traffic and to permit free entry of fuel in the normal tanks of commercial vehicles have still not been given the Council's stamp of approval.
Whether or not Britain will join the Community is a political matter. But it would be rather ironical if Britain's move to bigger and heavier vehicles and the EEC's delay in establishing a common transport policy combined to put the UK-----at this late stage—in a better position to blend with the Common Market's transport than would have been the case if the General had not said "Non"in 1963.