Brussels, 06/01/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission seems for now to have decided not to submit its new proposal on the harmonisation of the ban on 7.5 tonnes or more heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) circulating at weekends and bank holidays. Removed from the provisional agenda of Commission meetings in November and December, the proposal has still not been included on the agenda of the forthcoming meetings.
So as to facilitate the adoption of a compromise in Council, the Commission's services have drawn up a document that provides for a ban on lorries circulating from Saturday at 22.00 hrs. to Sunday at 22.00 hrs., or nine hours more than in the proposal that had led to violent opposition on the part of three Member States in Council. At the Transport Council on 6 October last, France, Germany and Austria, and, to a certain extent, Italy and Belgium, opposed the Commission's first proposal, that would have limited the ban to Sundays only, from 07.00 hrs. to 22.00 hrs. These Member States pointed to the risks for safety and the environment. Germany and Austria (which implement the most restrictive schedules) considered, moreover, that schedules for the circulation of heavy goods vehicles should come under subsidiarity, and that, therefore, it was not up to the Union to decide, each State being free to set its own legislation in the matter.
The United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Spain, however, pleaded in favour of harmonisation that would enable HGVs to circulate in Europe according to uniform rules, invoking the demands of the smooth running of the single market. Portugal (which only implements restrictions on the circulation of hazardous goods on certain roads) was rather in favour of the Commission's proposal. For its part, the International Union of Road Transport Workers insisted on harmonisation, arguing that "restrictions on circulation prevent a rational use of the infrastructures" and that they were negative from a social point of view, as they prevented heavy goods drivers from going home, blocking them on the road over the weekend.
In the new draft that the Commission has had on the table for two months now, the ban would be limited to 22.00 hrs. on Saturdays to 22.00 hrs. on Sundays, ie., a schedule similar to that applied in France. The new version of the draft directive is said, moreover, to place emphasis on the fact that this harmonisation only concerns the main trunk roads defined in the Trans-European Transport Networks. It also provides for procedures to notify those "bank holidays" for which circulation by HGVs would be prohibited, as well as ways of deciding on which types of heavy goods vehicles would be exempted from the ban. It seems, however, that, having tested the water among Member States the Commission has noted that its new proposal would not be backed by a majority in Council and that it regards it inappropriate to present it immediately. The next Transport Council is on 28 March.
In this more political than technical debate, statistical arguments will not sway either way. In the analysis accompanying its initial proposal, the Commission considered that the ban to circulate at weekends would not on the whole reduce pollution, the risks of accidents or congestion, as freight traffic is simply shifted from the weekend to weekdays.
Regarding congestion, the Commission claimed that "on a normal weekend, traffic density is considerably lesser that on weekdays. This is true even in Member States where there are no restrictions on weekend circulation". It took as proof Dutch statistics showing circulation peaks in excess of 1,500 vehicles an hour on motorways between 8.00 and 9.00 in the morning and 16.00 and 18.00 hrs. in the evening, whereas these peaks are not exceeded at weekends. Tables, however, show that weekend traffic remains at between 1,000 and 1,500 vehicles an hour between 10..00 in the morning and 20.00 hrs..
Regarding accidents, it wrote that the comparison between Member States demonstrated that "there seems to be no correlation between restrictions on circulation at weekends and the number of fatal accidents at weekends (…) Member States that have the lowest level of fatal accidents at weekends are not those where there are restrictions on the circulation of trucks at weekends". Thus, it cited 1995 statistics demonstrating that in Europe there was on average: 434 fatal accidents on Saturdays and 266 on Sundays, against 662 to 731 during the week. Countries applying a ban on Sunday circulation recorded one fatal accident on Sundays in the case of Austria, 33 in the case of France and 82 in the case of Spain. Among the "liberal" countries, the Netherlands recorded an average of one fatal accident on Sundays, but the United Kingdom 46.