40 tonnes may wait till next millenrium
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1111 Paul Channon's excuses for rebuffing the FTA's new campaign for 40-tonne lorries leant heavily on the state of our older bridges. He added that 'any increase in lorry weights would require Parliamentary approval"; his next sentence clearly implied that he did not intend to seek that approval.
An EEC directive No 85/3 which specifies (among other things) a 40-tonne limit for international traffic is already in force, however. And the EEC Commission's DirectorGeneral of Transport the top transport official in Brussels said of the necessary bridge assessment and strengthening work This is urgent, it is a priority." His remarks were set in the context of the "Single European Market", in which all internal barriers not just those hampering transport are supposed to have been removed by 1992.
Just over a year ago (August 1986) I devoted an article to the legal aspects of the "derogation" granted to the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, which allows them to retain their existing gross weight limits. Subsequent developments call for an update.
First, EEC Transport Ministers have plugged the one gap in Directive 85/3, In July last year they agreed on a drive axle weight of 11.5 tonnes. This is to come into force by January 1992. This gave the 12 EEC countries five and a half years in which to carry out any strengthening work.
Despite this long interval Britain and Ireland. pleading weak bridges, argued for and secured an extension to their derogation on the same terms as from 40 tonnes.
Second in June 1986 the Commission sent to Transport Ministers a suggested medium-term transport infrastructure programme. This argued that, since the EEC 12 are supposed to become an integrated economic entity by 1992, transport links cannot be looked at simply on a national basis.
Some degree of Community financial aid was therefore envisaged. And the minimum required on the road network is "alignment with the Community situation regarding commercial vehicle weights and dimensions".
Third, in February the Commission published a Report "on the circumstances which have justified the derogation". This highly technical document accepts that about two thirds of British bridges need to be assessed. It recommends that the British Government should draw up a strategic plan for this, and for any subsequent strengthening. It suggested that this plan could be ready by mid-1987, five months after the Report appeared.
Fourth, the Department of Transport's Explanatory Memorandum to Parliament on the Report dismisses the Commission's time-scale, but does not suggest any other. "Much work remains to be done, in consultation with the bridge owners, to plan the next steps", it says.
So much for the past. What happens next? What should happen next is a Commission
proposal on how long the derogation from 40 tonnes should last. (Indeed, Directive 85/3 lays down that this was to have been made by June last year.) By the end of this year a similar proposal should be made on the 11,5-tonne drive axle derogation.
Director-General Pena's speech to the ETA seemed to imply, however, that the Commission does not intend to make these proposals until it has received the DTp strategic programme for bridge strengthening. "The decision is dependent to a large extent on what work has to be done and on what money is available for it," he said.
While the DTp has given no pubic indication of its time-scale, it is clear from Channon's remarks to the Freight Transport Associaton that the matter is not regarded as urgent. And DTp officials have been overheard talking in private about 15 years that is until the year 2002!
If Britain continues to treat the subject in this leisurely fashion the Commission will not wait indefinitely. Indeed, it will not be allowed to by other Member States, whose hauliers are fed up with being penalised for operating here at weights acceptable in even the poorest EEC countries like Greece and Portugal.
Faced with continued British procrastination the Commission will probably pluck a date from the air perhaps 1992, the target for the "Single European Market". That would be a proposal to the 12 Transport Ministers for a formal Decision, which they would have to discuss. During that discussion Channon (or his successor) would have to explain the steps he was taking to come into line.
He will probably be fairly relaxed about this. For Nicholas Ridley, who negotiated the derogation, insisted on including in the directive a form of words which said that the eventual Decision would have to be unanimous in other words any one Minister, including the British, had a veto.
Article 75(3) of the Treaty of Rome, however, under which this veto is supposed to operate, restricts it to situations "where the application of . . . the regulatory system for transport would be liable to have a serious effect on the operation of transport facilities". This does not seem applicable to a situation where one third of British bridges, carrying well over two thirds of our heavy traffic, could already take 40 tonnes. So reliance on it might lead to the veto being challenged in the European Court of Justice.
In any event the derogation is clearly described as "temporary". Sometime a Transport Secretary is going to have to pluck up enough political courage his own and that of his Cabinet colleagues to lay before Parliament an amendment to the C&U Regulations which implement the Directive in full and bring Britain into line. The FTA campaign is bound to a succeedeventually.
by Keith Vincent