RIGHT MAN FOR THE JOB
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Say what you like about Neil Kinnock as an after-dinner speaker, the former Labour Party leader has certainly settled in nicely as EU Transport Commissioner. He may not have completely mastered the technical aspects of the job but he's clearly grasped political nuances of life in Brussels. To be fair it was 'probably asking a lot of many of the "benighted penguins" at the Hilton (his tongue-in-cheek words) to listen to over 2,000 words on various aspects of European transport policy; but anyone who has to speak at a trade association dinner has our sympathy. For what it's worth the FTA did well to get him there. Perhaps those same operators might have been more interested to hear his comments to journalists in an off-the-cuff Q&A session immediately before its great bunfight. His thoughts on 44 tonnes across the EU ("It's coming, there's no doubt at all about that") and the root cause of uneven enforcement within the Union ("I think it's a matter of will, frankly") show a clear grasp of what's holding up progress in creating a more cost-effective and better regulated road transport industry across Europe. The Commissioner is planning to bring in "new initiatives" during next year that will "safeguard the functioning of the internal market, protect responsible operators and the general public". f it means applying consistently rigorous enforce ment standards across every EU member state then Commercial Motor is all for it. So is Kinnock an out-and-out lorry lover? Let's not jump to conclusions. On the subject of investment in EU transport infrastructure he insists that the "balance in every European country should be in favour of railways...and various means of improving the means of rail transport". However, that wasn't all he said back in the grand hall. In front of hundreds of truck operators he stressed the need for combined transport in order to "promote the integration of the merits of a long haul by rail with the flexibility of local collection and delivery by road". And he went out of his way to emphasise that "whatever stimuli are given to other modes road transport will continue to play a major role in the transport of goods". In an organisation that's plagued with idealists, Kinnock sounds like the sort of person the European Commission currently needs—a pragmatist.