Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-23-Speech-2-078"
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"en.20011023.5.2-078"2
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"Mr President, this is really one of the worst pieces of legislation I have seen in this Parliament. The benefits it offers are vague and speculative – they are unproven and unquantified, but the costs are real, immediate and massive. Credible estimates suggest that the costs of implementation in the UK alone could range between EUR 15 and 30 billion. The effects will reach into a wide-range of industries – not only agriculture, but road haulage, construction and many other areas.
I have been contacted by an exceptionally wide-range of business organisations and they are universally opposed to the measure and especially to those amendments which would make it even more repressive. Those organisations include: the Confederation of British Industry, the National Farmers' Union, the Road Haulage Association, the Quarrying Association, the Coal Industry and JCB, the heavy equipment manufacturer. It appears that the limit set by the directive would restrict a truck driver to six hours work, a tractor driver to two or three hours and a brush cutter to 15 minutes. This will do huge damage to European economies. It will cost jobs. It has been pointed out that the average jogger exceeds the limit by a factor of 7 or 8, while even walking down a road could break the rules. I suspect that I was over the limit on Monday on the bus from Basle Airport to Strasbourg!
The directive also places huge new costs and administrative burdens on industry in terms of measuring vibration levels and recording exposure. There is a crying need, Mr President, for proper regulatory impact assessments to be applied to European legislative proposals. If that had been done in this case, it would never have got this far. Any possible benefits are far outweighed by the costs. It appears that we cannot reject the whole proposal, but I appeal to colleagues to support amendments which would soften it and to reject amendments which would make it even more disastrous than it already is."@en1
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