Permit quota up
Page 17
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IN THE WAKE of his much-publicised truck ride to Italy during the summer, Staffordshire East MEP Robert Moreland is optimistic that at long last there may be significant progress on the question of EEC haulage permits.
He hopes that this autumn's review of quotas will produce a "serious liberalisation" of the permit system for 1984.
But it would be wishful thinking to imagine that the EEC's Council of Ministers would go the whole way in accepting without reservation proposals from the European Commission for wholesale reform.
"Most governments in the Community would agree with it. But problem one would be that of Germany, where they have a political problem arising from the declared aim of trying to divert goods traffic on to the railways.
"I think, however, that the present Christian Democrat government will be slightly more relaxed about it than its Socialist predecessors."
Mr Moreland was giving an ever been on a long-distance lorry journey across France?" he asked.
Other than the likelihood of a more relaxed West German attitude to permits, plus the continuation of pressure from both the European Commission and the European Parliament, he thought there were other hopeful signs.
In the United Kingdom, he was confident that a House of Lords Select Committee on the EEC was likely to deliver an outright condemnation of the quota system and to call for its abolition (see p4).
As for the French, British Conservatives and their allies would be pressing the Commission to take legal action against the Paris administration for the continuing requirement for the carnet de passage, already condemned as illegal by both Commission and Parliament.
"I think my trip was worthwhile because it helped to underline the remarkable ignorance about this problem at the political level.
"As for my making specific re ference to the corruption at the Italian border, my findings are now receiving some publicity in Italy itself, where it is being treated as yet another example of corruption under the Christian Democrats.
"If I had encountered corruption in Germany, I would have referred to that, too, especially since it is the Germans and the Italians who are most opposed to liberalisation of the system."