Logistics UK urges Government to strike Brexit deal

“Leaving the EU without a free trade agreement would hurt businesses on both sides of the Channel,” said Logistics UK’s policy director Elizabeth de Jong, “putting pan-European supply chains at risk and potentially driving up the price of trade between the UK and its biggest trading partner. There are two sides to every border, and we are very hopeful that the EU will recognise the economic benefits to having continued access to the UK market for its hauliers, while acknowledging the contribution that UK hauliers bring to their own market. After all, the EU’s hauliers do double the value of haulage trade in the UK that the UK’s own operators do in the EU.

“Logistics UK is hopeful that a compromise can be reached in negotiations – without one, the situation for both UK and EU hauliers is very bleak, as the alternative permit system provides very little access on either side of the border, and the resulting slowdown in traffic across the border would put the nation’s interconnected supply chain at risk.”

Thomas Cullen, consultant at Transport Intelligence added: “The peculiar thing is, it is the drivers and logistics companies of EU states that benefit disproportionately from the cross-Channel trade. It is unclear what the real objectives of the two sides are or what the result will be.

“However, prominent in the minds of the EU officials will be the politics around the ‘Mobility Package 2019’. Key to this was the desire by the German and French governments to regulate the level of penetration of central European drivers and hauliers into their respective national road freight markets. The regulations have ended up further limiting the ability of drivers to work in other countries of the EU, with drivers no longer allowed to take long breaks in their vehicles and requirements that they return to their home countries more frequently.

“The cross-Channel trade and operations in the UK are very valuable to many central European drivers as well as road freight companies and losing access to the UK would be economically painful. However, the central European nations have found it difficult to make their voices heard in Brussels in the face of strong lobbying from the French government over the Mobility Package and this may well be the case in relation to the UK business. It very much seems that France and Germany will be keen to embrace regulation in the furtherance of both the protection of their domestic interests and political objectives.”