Brussels, 18/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - On Monday, the European Parliament and the Council reached a conciliation agreement on the working time Directive for the road transport sector (see EUROPE of 14 December, p.9). The Directive gives a broader definition of working time than in the current rules, including activities such as loading and unloading, cleaning and maintenance, etc, and gives a definition of standby duty. It sets the maximum average working week at 48 hours over a four-month reference period, with a maximum weekly working time of 60 hours (compared with 78 at the moment). There is also a ban on night workers working more than 10 hours a day.
Once it has been formally adopted in third reading by the EP and the Council, the Directive will be published in the Official Journal at the beginning of 2002 and incorporated into national law by 2005. It will apply to self-employed lorry drivers from 2009 onwards. The specific conditions of the Member State in question (peripheral location, competition, etc) will be taken into account when deciding whether or not self-employed drivers in that state will be covered.
Parliament's delegation, headed by Ingo Friedrich (EPP, Germany) said it was "well satisfied with the overall agreement" for which at the EP's request, the definition of the self-employed has been tightened up to prevent the creation of new forms of "false" self-employed drivers during the period before the provisions apply to the self-employed. The EP highlights that the Directive only allows derogations for "objective or technical reasons".
The President of the Council, Isabelle Durant, stressed that a very important step had been taken in regulating an industry characterised by cut-throat competition to the detriment of drivers' working conditions and the safety of all road users. Commissioner Loyola de Palacio also welcomed the agreement after almost eight years of negotiations, first of all between the social partners, then at the Council and finally between Council and Parliament. She said the agreement "represents a crucial breakthrough for "Social Europe" in a hitherto excluded sector". She also stressed that the Directive would "help to improve road safety: we have today taken a vital step towards safer and more competitive road transport which should subsequently be followed up by agreement on our other proposals concerning driver training and certificates and harmonised rules governing driving bans for lorries".
The Transport Council will decide on a new regulation (3820/85) in 2002 covering break periods for drivers in order to avoid a mushrooming of derogations and enable the regulations to be more effectively applied and monitored using digital tachographs.