Trailing behind
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hris Curzon's excellent summary of the current situation in the European Union deserves a comment or two in support of the poor old UK trailer manufacturers (Sound off, CM 4-10 June). He rightly points out that trailer type approval (homologation) is widespread throughout the EU and obligatory in the major trailer-producing countries. UK exporters are obliged to comply with these national requirements, at considerable expense and time, to sell products in their markets. Whether each state also has a separate trailer registration scheme is something am not sure about, but the homologation data could be used by the authorities to produce such basic essentials as a trailer identification plate for a type, if not for each individual trailer. Then, of course, each trailer would need to have its own registration plate, log book and tax disc.
However complicated that might sound, it is no more onerous than the UK requirement for the tractor units. And let's not forget that the trailer may be almost as expensive without its load.
The UK is so unconcerned that it does not have either registration or type approval schemes, in spite of =nen ous attempts by the Commercial Trailer Association to argue the case with the Government It rejects even the simplest of registration schemes as being too complicated and expensive to administer.
So we are left with nothing more than a comment while an EC working party is drafting proposals for a harmonised EU type approval scheme, based largely on the modular system approach, which the CTA would accept.
Meanwhile, we must stoically put up with the socalled Un-Common Market and un-level playing field. Alan Smith, Commercial Trailer Association, London.