Eight hours lingers
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• Disagreements within Europe will prevent the eighthour day from disappearing altogether when the new EEC hours law comes into force at the end of this month. It will still apply to international operators running into seven non-EEC countries — Austria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Yugoslavia, Norway, Sweden and the Soviet Union.
All seven countries have ratified AETR, a United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) agreement applicable to drivers on international journeys.
The AETR agreement contains many of the more repressive features of the present EEC regulation, including the eight-hour driving day and more conditions for non-rigids over 20 tonnes gross.
The EEC regulations apply the AETR rules to Common Market vehicles travelling to these countries even while they are still on EEC roads.
The EEC Commission wants to bring AETR into line with the new Common Market rules, but it faces a number of problems.
The first is political — nonEEC countries resent being asked to change AETR simply to keep in line with the EEC. This hostility is especially strong since only a few years ago they agreed to bring AETR into line with the 1977 changes to EEC rules.
Eastern Bloc countries will also take the opportunity to demonstrate wider political hostility to the EEC.
The greatest difficulty, how ever, lies inside the Commission itself. Commissioner Stanley Clinton Davies has several times expressed strong hostility to certain parts of the new EEC rules — especially the more flexible rest periods. He is likely to try to block attempts to change AETR, since this would mean extending these "objectionable" features beyond the EEC boundaries.
Attempts to bring AETR into line with the new EEC rules are unlikely therefore to begin before next year.