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• Central European governments are causing enormous environmental as well
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as economic damage by restricting road freight movements through the Alps, according to the International Road Transport Union (MU).
It calculates that diversions caused by the restrictions cost more than E150m a year and result in extra fuel consumption of 350,000 litres a day.
Jens Hugel, IRU head of economic and environmental affairs, says the Ecopoint rationing system in Austria is mainly to blame as well as restrictions on trucks using the St Gotthard and Mont Blanc tunnels.
"The governments responsible present these restrictions as safety and environmental protection measures," he says. "But they actually create more problems than they solve—and they have an invidious effect of transferring them elsewhere."
Hugel is particularly angry that one-way traffic through the St Gotthard tunnel will remain at least until September. The restriction was Imposed following a head-on collision between two trucks.