USE IT OR LOSE IT
Page 5
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• The International Road Freight Office's plan to force British TIR hauliers to return 'underutilised' annual EC permits exposes the stupidity of the whole permit system. As if hauliers haven't got enough to think about, what with VAT returns, uniform business rates, costings, tachographs and maintenance, the IRFO is seriously suggesting that hauliers who do not make sufficient use of their annual multilateral permits should return them and apply for new ones every month. Spare a thought for the international operator with an urgent job on, as he waits for his permits to wend their way through the postal network. And then spare a thought for the IRFO clerks who will have to find the time to process anything up to 500 permit applications every month, instead of every year. Of course some hauliers make insufficient use of their permits, thereby denying other hauliers access to the Continent. But considering the current recession, how many TIR operators can honestly say they are making full use of their permit allocation? The IRFO is also right to say that hauliers who make most use of their EC permits should be given more. But having witnessed the unedifying spectacle of desperate domestic hauliers running vehicles at a loss simply to cover monthly repayments, will we now see TIR operators forced to cross the Channel at anytime, for any rate, just to be seen to be using their permits? Which brings us back to the question, why have permits in the first place? In the run up to 1992 the Community is struggling towards the single, liberalised, European market. The latest murmurings from the IRFO serve to remind us that the process still has a long way to go. Why wait for 1992? It is time to diipense with permits — and it is time that EC transport ministers firiblly stopped fighting their corners and got down to the task of harmonisation and liberalisation.
The biggest worry over cabotage should not be whether British hauliers can grab their fair share of Euro business, but what will happen to the hundreds of redundant Eurocrats when the barriers finally come down. God help the unemployment figures then.