kr79:
I was in Berlin last week and got chatting to a few locals and the general message was that normal people there are not happy with the EU and mainly about the Eastern European states and putting lots in to bail out the Euro and see us leaving as meaning a bigger burden for them.
I’d have voted remain without a doubt if it had been the pre Eastern block EU
To be fair we were getting an ever increasingly bad deal out of it regards everything from the transfer of industry to an ever reducing share of the road transport market from the time we joined and well before the East Euro issue.To the point where transit countries like France and Germany were holding UK hauliers to ransom regards permits by classing transit such as UK-Italy freight movements as part of their own permit quotas.
Yeah true enough but there was still a lot more uk firms and proper German French Dutch firms etc with local drivers earning a decent living than there is now.
The borders come down in 1992 and British firms still head a healthy presence in Europe until around 2000-2002 when the eastern block country’s come in.
Carryfast:
To be fair we were getting an ever increasingly bad deal out of it regards everything from the transfer of industry to an ever reducing share of the road transport market from the time we joined and well before the East Euro issue.To the point where transit countries like France and Germany were holding UK hauliers to ransom regards permits by classing transit such as UK-Italy freight movements as part of their own permit quotas.
Yeah true enough but there was still a lot more uk firms and proper German French Dutch firms etc with local drivers earning a decent living than there is now.
The borders come down in 1992 and British firms still head a healthy presence in Europe until around 2000-2002 when the eastern block country’s come in.
Realistically the whole thing was always a contradiction.In trying to form a single market at worse against the national interest of its member states or at best to the disproportionate benefit of some at the expense of others.
Whether that was the transfer of manufacturing from UK to Germany etc.Or the mainland Euro states trying to distort the transport market permit system for their own benefit as I’ve described for example.Which ironically is actually one of the main reasons why the UK haulage industry actually ‘supported’ the idea of the single transport market,as opposed to permits.
To now the East Euros taking maximum advantage of their lower cost domestic economies to carry out third country and/or cabotage operations allowed within western Europe as part of that silly move.
In all cases we were/are better off out of it where we can set our own terms.The idea of full weekly rest periods not being allowed to be taken in the vehicle not even being close to what’s needed in that regard.A return to quotas and permits,but this time properly enforced and administered and in which everyone gets their fair share of the work and which totally stop cabotage and third country operations,being what’s needed in this case.
