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Desperate measures
Page 15
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The traffic in forged French transit permits revealed this week, and the possibility that this is only the tip of a sizeable iceberg of illegality, is a bitter comment on the way in which arbitrary national limits are frustrating European trade and transport. We hold no brief for those who have broken the law but it is not difficult to understand what drove them to take the risk. The quota of permits available for journeys to or through France, Germany and Italy falls pathetically short of requirements and the slightly bigger quotas announced this week will bring only a slight easing. Even these have been obtained only after prolonged negotiation by DoE officials who must see a touch of irony in openly enforcing a permit system which they are simultaneously trying to loosen and would like to remove.
The basic trouble stems from the same narrow nationalistic attitudes which have undermined progress on a common EEC transport policy (a delay that promises to be to our advantage as it turns out) and have prevented the development of realistic Continental approaches to modernizing transport and distribution in the way that has happened in Britain.
At the Road Haulage Association conference this week the intelligent young essayist forecast that the Continental state railway interests would continue to exert their strong protective influence, to the detriment of road transport. We hope his fears are exaggerated and indeed the impression gained by a CM staff member in Brussels this month was that the EEC Commission and the member nations are rapidly realizing the need for a more liberal and realistic attitude towards transport. They begin to see that denying the natural growth of the most economic and convenient freight systems could put a brake on industrial growth and social development.
Even such enlightenment is, however, unlikely to remove the combination of bilateral quotas, EEC international permits and — eventually —ECMT licences that UK operators will face as members of the Common Market. It would be irresponsible to regard the use of forged permits as a blow for freedom — but it might perhaps be seen as pointing .a (bent) finger of scorn at some of Europe's petty restraints.