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Cabotage could be coming next year
Page 7
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• Cabotage could become a reality next year if a pilot scheme supported by the British Government is approved by EC transport ministers.
They will meet in Brussels on 14 March to consider a cabotage experiment proposed by Spain (currently president of the EC Council) which, according to a source in Brussels, could allow over 1,000 vehicles to undertake domestic haulage outside their own countries.
"We think it's a good idea so that everybody will have some experience with cabotage before it becomes a fact of life in the 1990s," a British Eurocrat has told Commercial Motor.
The French, Germans and Italians are understood to have reservations about the experiment: they are under pressure from their hauliers who fear tough pan-European competition in the post-1992 Single European Market (SEM).
But the Dutch and Belgians think the scheme is too conservative. At next month's meeting Britain will argue that cabotage licences should be shared out on the basis of cur rent multilateral quotas the Dutch and Belgians will de mand a bigger share. Transport ministers will also have to work out how to tax vehicles operating in EC countries where they are not licensed.
Also on the March agenda will be the controversial EC proposal that hauliers must give financial guarantees equal to 10% of the new value of each vehicle to qualify for operating licences. Britain's position is that an accountant's report on a firm's financial position should be sufficient.
The Belgians, whose hauliers are already obliged to give bank guarantees, say there should be a set sum per vehicle, while the Germans want to calculate the guarantee on the basis of the tonnage of capacity.
The third item on the agenda will be the European Commission's proposals for weight limits for two, three and fouraxled trucks. This discussion is • likely to develop into a debate on Britain's open-ended exemption from the EC's vehicle weight legislation.
The Commission proposes to end that exemption in 1996 and the French are pressing for an even earlier date.