Truck & Business 262

Without attributing powers to the European Commissioner for Transport that she does not have, I must admit that I am looking forward to 31 May with great impatience. With great impatience and… with no small amount of anxiety. On 31 May, Violeta Bulc will announce the result of months of work and consultation. This result will take the form of a ‘Road Transport Initiative’, a package of measures that will touch all the legislative pillars of European road transport (access to the profession, driving and rest times, cabotage, etc.). First and foremost, we are of course very pleased that certain rules are finally being clarified. Too many of the current rules are as leaky as a sieve and uncertainty does not do companies any good. The risk of being caught with your hand in the biscuit tin when you were just sure that you were not breaking any rules scares off real entrepreneurs. But in which direction does Bulc want the rules to evolve (to the extent that Parliament will of course follow her in this…)? For the time being, it is being said in the corridors (see the article on rest in the cabin in this issue) and via trade union demonstrations that Europe is going to relax the working conditions of road drivers rather than simply banning long rest in the cabin. The reasoning behind this is said to be as follows: fewer restrictions = less difficult to control = fewer problems. But in doing so, the Commissioner risks widening the existing gap between the countries that founded the European Union and the recent members. No Western European country is prepared any longer to allow its national market to be plundered by unfair competition. In February, these countries set up the Road Alliance, sending a clear message to the European Commission. If the measures proposed by Violeta Bulc do not create a balanced competitive landscape (and moreover at the very moment that European Commissioner Marianne Thyssen is trying to sow the seeds of a social Europe…), then a number of Member States will have no choice but to erect new administrative barriers to protect their companies and jobs. What an anticlimax for Europe… Transport, which once stood for the opening of borders and exchanges, would thus become an enlargement of a lost dream. And it is precisely thanks to that dream, we must never forget, that Europe has not known war for more than 70 years.