FRANCE: FRENCH HAULIERS SET UP BORDER ROAD BLOCKS TO PROTEST ABOUT INCREASING FUEL PRICES AND E.U. INTRODUCTION OF A SHORTER WORKING WEEK

Record ID: 632304

  • Title: FRANCE: FRENCH HAULIERS SET UP BORDER ROAD BLOCKS TO PROTEST ABOUT INCREASING FUEL PRICES AND E.U. INTRODUCTION OF A SHORTER WORKING WEEK
  • Date: 10th January 2000
  • Summary: CU FRENCH NEWSPAPER HEADLINES ABOUT ROAD BLOCKS AND BARRICADES (3 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 25th January 2000 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: HESIES, FRANCE (BELGIAN-FRENCH BORDER)/ BLAISIEUX, FRANCE/ STRASBOURG, FRANCE (GERMAN-FRENCH BORDER)
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Economic News,Quirky
  • Reuters ID: LVAEEZ3YNBEIY6JX9GTQWZF92JDB
  • Story Text: Traffic logjams have piled up along France's many borders as French haulage bosses set up roadblocks to protest against higher fuel prices and the introduction of a shorter working week.
    Clad in the morning mist, the main crossing into Belgium on the main Paris-Brussels motorway was brought to a virtual standstill on Monday (January 10) by about 70 trucks, part of a protest against the shorter working week to be introduced in France.
    The border, one of the main crossing points into Belgium, normally sees thousands of cars and lorries cross every hour.
    Instead, only a handful of cars were trickling through the blockade, winding their way past the stationary trucks.
    The French are used to truckers' protests bringing the country to a halt, but this time it was the bosses who were manning the barricades.
    They handed out leaflets to passing drivers, explaining that plans to shorten the working week in France would drive them out of business and favour foreign companies.
    The atmosphere had more in common with a Sunday fete than a protest that has thrown a ring of steel around France's borders.
    Some French motorists shouted encouragement to the truckers, as policemen stood by, joking with the protesters.
    Belgians and Germans trying to leave France looked glum and nervous.
    But for the handful of foreign trucks that failed to make it out of time, it was the start of a long day of waiting.
    "Of course it's bad for my work to be stuck here, but you have to understand them," said one German trucker.
    Olivier Delmotte, the vice president of the National Federation of Road Transport (FNTR) said the blockade would be kept in place as long as it was needed.
    "For six months we have been trying to make ourselves heard without trucks on the roads and nothing has happened.
    Unfortunately, we have been listened to, but not heard and experience shows that people only hear what we have to say when we put the lorries on the road.We have tried to make the blockades as light as possible by letting cars, emergency services and livestock through.We cannot do anything more,"
    he said.
    Delmotte demanded action from the French transport ministry to restore competition to the industry.
    At the northern French/Belgian border town of Baisieux hundreds of trucks coming into France were forced to turn off their engines on the A27 motorway, unable to proceed on their journeys.Some cars were allowed to weave through the blockades, while lorries and larger vehicles had no option but to stick out the wait.
    The road blocks, initiated by the trucking companies rather than the drivers in around 47 different routes into France, are aimed at putting pressure on the French government to rethink the planned reduction of the national working week to 35 hours from 39.They feel a shortened working week will put French companies at a disadvantage versus foreign counterparts.
    "Especially one has to know that today in Brussels, ministers from all the different countries are trying to come up with an accord for a 48 hour week in the transport industry.....in France only about one in 15 really wants the 35 hour week.I'm sure you understand there is an imbalance.
    If we have a 35 hour week instead of 48 - we will never make it", says Andre Sion, owner of a large transportation company.
    Traffic has also been hit out of Britain, Luxembourg, Germany Switzerland Italy and Spain in road blocks set up by the French National Road Haulage Association.
    In Strasbourg on the Franco-German border, Michel Chalot of the National Road Haulage Association confirmed that "one of our problems is a thirty percent price increase for diesel fuel and the economic consequences of this increase.
    But the main issue is the problem with the 35 hour work week.
    Compared with other countries we cannot do anything about that."
    It's not the first time that blocked lorries in France have made the headlines: France has seen a series of similar road disruptions by militant trucking companies, with haulers paralysing the country for 11 days in November 1996.
    By early afternoon, around 2,000 truckers had enforced partial blockades at frontier crossings with Italy, Britain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, and Spain, causing lengthy tailbacks on some major international routes.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: Video restrictions: parts of this video may require additional clearances. Please see ‘Business Notes’ for more information.
Register