At last—EU moves to harmonise on hours
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• by Karen Miles Years of contusion about European Union rules on drivers' hours could end following a European Commission decision to unify their interpretation.
The Ell's policy body has agreed that CV enforcement officers throughout the EU should study the differences between the 15 member states on enforcing the 1985 drivers' hours regulation 3820.
The plan is to produce a single EU interpretation to cut the time-wasting confusion suffered by operators and drivers trying to conform to the law. A unified and simplified approach would also make it more difficult for cowboy operators to hide behind 3820's complexities.
Countries which enforce the rules inaccurately will be identified and corrected. The Spanish, for example, are known to wrongly insist that UK irrternational operators should operate abroad with their tachographs running on Continental time. More complicated areas within the regulations should also be clarified, such as the problem of calculating paybacks for shortened split and daily rest times, The EC has told the enforcement officers' working body to avoid a re-write of 3820; but where different sections of the regulation give conflicting advice to operators, the working body could eventually recommend small changes to the law.
The UK's Department of Transport will be watching the working body with interest, hoping it will promote the re-introduction of a rolling interpretation of rest and driving time, which forced drivers to take more rest than is currently required. The rolling interpretation was outlawed in the mid-1990s when the European Court of Justice opted for the "wipe the slate clean" method.
Owen Thomas, head of road freight policy at the Freight Transport Association, welcomes the working body's review: "3820 is far from perfect," he says. "It is difficult to interpret, but much of the complexity is the price you have to pay for its flexibility."