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block 40% rise
• International hauliers in the UK face further permit starvation as EEC Transport Ministers once again failed to agree on a 40% increase in the multilateral quotas for 1987 at their meeting on Monday, March 23.
For the second time the Germans were responsible for blocking attempts in Brussels to improve the modest 15% increase approved last year, which gives Britain only 760 licences out of a total of 9,446. They were supported by the Greeks who also raised objections to any expansion of the quotas.
"There is no reason for further delay — quotas are needed now," says EEC Transport Commissioner Stanley Clinton-Davis — but Germany's new Transport Minister, Jiirgen Warnke, wants more fiscal harmonisation before agreeing to further liberalisation.
The Germans are worried that motorway tolls and different rates of fuel tax and VED distort competition. German hauliers in particular fear that a leap in the quotas will mean competition they cannot handle, especially from the Netherlands where tax on diesel is very low.
At the moment the Ger mans pay the equivalent of 31p per litre for their diesel, compared with a price of 27p in Holland and 34p in the UK.
The German veto makes a mockery of the agreement made last June to raise quotas by 40% per year until they disappear in 1992 with the advent of liberalisation.
Common Market Ministers tried to rush through a 34% increase in multilateral permits before the end of last year (CM November 15), but their plan was thwarted by stiff opposition once again from the Germans who demanded more time to assess the progress made towards fiscal harmonisa
tion (CM December 20).
The Ministers next opportunity to approve more permits will be in June, when UK hauliers hope that Belgium, which currently holds the EEC presidency, will force a decision in favour of the 40% increase by demanding a majority vote.
Meanwhile the 'black market' price for a multilateral permit — between £10,000 and £12,000 — is hardly likely to fall.
Russ Peters, chairman of the Road Haulage Association's International Group, says he is not surprised by the outcome of the meeting, "but I am disappointed," he admits, 'although no-one seriously expected the increase to go through as nothing has changed since the last meetng in December.
"It is going to be very hard to get agreement on hannoniaation," he says. "While every nember country says it agrees with the basic principles of harmonisation on the one hand, on the other each one is saying it has the most expensive transport in Europe and will not compromise on any of the details leading towards full harmonisation."
The Freight Transport Association's Jack Welsh agrees: "We have very little hope of achieving the 1992 deadline of completion of internal markets unless we can solve the problem of permit liberalisation," he says. "What it comes down to is that the Germans lack confidence in their own haulage industry's ability to compete internationally."
Plans for creating a medium-term infrastructure fund also ran into difficulties at the Brussels meeting, with Ireland and the four South European states voting in favour, with the rest against.