Brussels, 22/11/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has adopted the announced package of measures on the conditions of employment in the haulage business, aimed at allowing for a compromise in Council on working time for truckers. The "Transport" Council will examine this "social package" on 21 December. As mentioned in EUROPE of 20/21 November, the Commission is proposing:
- a revised version of the directive on working time that "temporarily" excludes self-employed truckers from the directive's field of application. This exclusion proved to be necessary to rally the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Finland, Austria, Italy and Spain around a compromise. Truck drivers unions and several Member States, notably France, nevertheless fear the multiplication of false self-employed drivers; this is why the exclusion will be reviewed three years after the directive's transposition. The revised directive, moreover, introduces certain amendments adopted by Parliament, notably by including in "working hours" of truckers the time devoted to the overseeing loading and the filling-in of customs and administrative forms. You may recall that the draft directive provides for an average working week of 48 hours, with the possibility of extending that limit to 60 hours if the average 48 hours is not exceeded over a four month reference period;
- a new regulation that will oblige Member States to issue "driver attestations" to truckers regularly driving international routes. This document will allow for a harmonised verification of the regularity of the conditions of employment, the aim being to avoid social dumping;
- a revised version of the draft directive on the ban on trucking at weekends and bank holidays on European trunk roads. This new text sets down a maximum limit for the bans (from 22..00 hrs on Saturday to 22.00 hrs. on Sunday during the year, and 07.00 hrs. on Saturday to 22.00 hrs. on Sunday during the summer), but those Member States that currently impose longer limits, in other words Austria, will be able to maintain their bans. Member States wanting to introduce new bans will have to notify them two months in advance and secure approval of the other States. The new version directive will in fact amount to freezing the current situation and introduce greater transparency. By sticking to the schedules provided for in France, and allowing Austria an exemption, it is foremost a compromise formula. The EU's most outlying States had said at the last Transport Council that they would only rally around the plan over working time if the Commission proposed a new compromise on the ban of driving at weekends.
