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German tolls move
Page 8
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• West Germany is heading for a legal showdown with the EC after the Bonn cabinet approved plans last week to impose road usage charges on foreign lorries. The tax, of up to 23,000 a year, will be imposed from 1 May next year.
A statement by the Federal Transport Ministry says that German roads can no longer be free to foreign trucks, which account for 65% of the commercial traffic on German roads. German hauliers, the statement adds, already pay the highest road usage taxes in the EC, and at the same time face motorway tolls in many EC countries.
The new charges — which, says the EC commission, break EC law — will apply to HGVs with more than three axles and a GVW weight of 18 tonnes and above. The income will enable Bonn to reduce German road tax.
The law permitting the new charges runs until the end of 1993, in the hope that by then the EC will have agreed on fiscal harmonisation for transport.
The International Road Transport Union has condemned the move as "a flagrant contradiction with the progress achieved by the EC."