French army block roads
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by Lee Kimber • Armed soldiers have been rigorously enforcing France's Sunday truck ban despite the unofficial agreement to allow trucks to drive along a motorway corridor to reach Calais from Belgium (CM 1016 April).
British authorities say they are powerless to do anything because the agreement is unofficial. It was supposed to have allowed drivers carrying a time-stamped official letter from a cross-Channel ferry operator to use the E40 motorway. A stamping machine was even set up at the roadside.
Since then soldiers and police have been stopping trucks, even enforcing the ban early on 10 April—six hours before it was due to start. The Road Haulage Association has made an official complaint. A driver for Northampton-based Man Transport was turned back at Gyvelde on 17 April and told unequivocally that no trucks would be allowed to use the corridor.
The machine set up to stamp the letters of passage has disappeared; the ferry operators who brokered the agreement say it has been moved up the road to a more convenient site at Tissangum.
Inter-official rivalry is believed to lie behind the confusion, with staff at the Pas de Calais who are sympathetic to truckers being hampered by the intransigence of national authorities.
.1 A 70% increase in freight through Dover broke the record for the highest daily throughput of trucks four times in the first quarter of 1997.
More than 413,000 trucks went through the port in the three months following the Channel Tunnel fire; the daily record now stands at 6,764.