Brussels, 23/11/2001 (Agence Europe) - At the conciliation meeting on lorry drivers' working time that took place in Brussels on Thursday, Parliament and Council were unable to reach agreement. The President of the Transport Council, Isabelle Durant, told some journalists that she still had hope since it was in nobody's interest for the proposal to come to nothing. A new Parliament/Council/Commission meeting will be organised soon - Ms Durant explained that the negotiations should be concluded in December to prevent the proposal being buried in a pile of papers when it is being demanded by the social partners.
The dispute essentially concerns night driving and the status of "self-employed" drivers. Parliament included the self-employed in the scope of the directive, but Council excluded them, simply laying down that the Commission may unveil a proposal, three years after the directive comes into force, based on research into the impact of the directive on people forced into self-employment. The Council and Parliament found more common ground on the derogations allowed by the directive and on the definition of night driving. The negotiations also made progress in terms of defining the "self-employed", but not in terms of automatically including them in the scope of the directive. The Presidency will now have to work out a new compromise package - the deadlines for reviewing the directive, the issues that the Commission should cover in its research and potential national and regional derogations, etc.