EC demands all truckers comply with Working Time Directive






The European Commission (EC) has called on Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Poland, Portugal and Spain “to take appropriate measures” to apply the Working Time Directive to self-employed road hauliers.The EC warned: “If these member states fail to inform the commission within two months about the measures taken to ensure compliance with EU law in this respect, the commission could refer the cases to the European Court of Justice.”The Directive was adopted in March 2002 “to establish minimum requirements in relation to the organisation of working time in order to improve the health and safety protection of persons performing mobile road transport activities and to improve road safety and align conditions of competition”.However, provision was made to exempt self-employed drivers until March 2009.Now, three years on, the EC claims seven states “have failed to communicate to the commission appropriate measures taken to transpose the directive”, prompting the threat of judicial action.Self-employed drivers in member states ignoring the directive, and in particular its weekly working time limits, would result in “a non-harmonised framework throughout the EU”, and distortion of competition against those member states which have properly applied the directive, said the commission.“The issue of whether or not the application of the rules to self-employed drivers is appropriate was extensively discussed between the commission, parliament and council on the occasion of the expiry of the exemption for this category of drivers,” it added.While the EC saw some practical difficulties (in its application) the European Parliament insisted the exemption should end.In France, there are more than 10,000 owner-operator truckers and the country’s leading road haulage federation, the FNTR, claims there are “practical difficulties” in applying the directive.“It’s important to point out that the directive refers to working time and not driving time, where the same rules apply to all haulage firms,” a spokesman told IFW.“Regulating how many hours an owner-operator puts in away from the wheel appears a nigh impossible task.”

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