Angry US firms fac :uro barriers
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• Barriers to block nonEuropean-owned transport operations, such as Federal Express, TNT and Ryder, working throughout the Continent are being considered by the EC Commission.
The EC has proposed that cabotage within the EC, scheduled for 1993, should be restricted to transport firms with "genuine community links". To be eligible, haulage and distribution firms would have to be managed, controlled and owned by "a majority of EC Nationals". Non-EC firms would continue to have local rights under the national laws of member states.
Such a move would also be bad news for American firms Consolidated Freightways and United Parcel Services which have invested tens of millions of pounds into European truck ing operations, and it would halt plans by other American firms to expand onto the Continent.
Bob Ferris of the American Trucking Association says: "As the Single European Market (SEM) gets closer, US companies want to start deliverini goods in Europe. We are all going to have to learn to wonl together." Already American trucking presentatives are planning to ;tit these "discriminatory" rives.
"The issue at hand is one of ar discrimination against in-EC firms," says Mark )ung of the United States ternational Trade iministration.
"A non-resident trucking mpany must show that a ajority of the managers of the rrier are EC nationals, and at a majority of the profits of ese operations accrue to EC tionals, or that a majority of e voting shares are held by nationals," says Young. m inter-agency task force aich includes the Department Commerce, the US Trade presentative, the Departent of Transportation and her Government agencies s been working to deal with
concerns regarding the discriminatory nature of EC directives on trucking," he adds. "We are also discussing these problems with other non-EC countries in an attempt to gain third country recognition and support."
TNT says such restrictive legislation would not affect its European business, and UPS, which recently set up a UK operation, is unsure how the scheme would affect its presence in the EC.
Legislation to restrict the rights of non-EC hauliers was first built into the original cabotage plan in 1985 but was withdrawn after some countries, including Britain, claimed there was no real foreign threat. The proposals to reintroduce such restrictions have been demanded by the French.