More Fuel Troubles

Truckers in Spain, Ireland and Poland
Join Europe Fuel Price Protests


By Douglas Andrew

B A R C E L O N A, Spain, Sept. 15 — Truckers in Spain, Ireland and Poland
joined Europe-wide protests against high gasoline prices today while
Britain and Belgium struggled to recover from the paralyzing effects of
days of fuel blockades.
Convoys of Spanish truckers and farmers joined forces to slow traffic
on the main ring road around Barcelona, Spain’s second-largest city, and
farmers began similar action in Merida, in the western Extremadura
agricultural region.
Others planned to picket the site of this weekend’s Spanish-German
summit in the city of Segovia, in central Spain, between Prime Minister
Jose Maria Aznar and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
In Ireland, motorists faced disruption as thousands of truckers
clogged roads with a go-slow protest.
Hauliers pushed ahead with a threatened 24-hour-long campaign after
the government rejected their demand that it cut diesel fuel tax by a
third.
In Poland, columns of trucks driving below 18 mph snarled traffic in
several larger cities, but police said the action was limited and failed
to clog traffic.
Across Europe, government taxes make up the bulk of what drivers pay
at the pump and add to the pain of crude oil prices, still at their
highest in a decade.

Traffic Halts in Netherlands

In the Netherlands, the government promised concrete proposals as the
country’s largest protests to date stopped traffic across the country.
Hundreds of trucks poured into The Hague as truckers took their anger to
the heart of government.
German truckers caused traffic chaos for the fourth day running,
jamming the northern city of Bremen, while opposition politicians launched
a parliamentary bid to cut fuel taxes.
Schroeder’s center-left government has so far resisted demands to
suspend so-called eco-taxes, which it started imposing last year on
polluting fuels. Fritz Kuhn of the Greens, a member of the ruling
coalition, today insisted that scrapping the eco-taxes was “absurd.”
But in Italy, the government bowed to truckers’ demands for new fuel
discounts, averting the threat of protests. Transport Minister Pierluigi
Bersani and representatives of truckers’ unions signed an accord in the
early hours of the morning.
Angry truckers in big oil-exporter Norway plan to block five oil
terminals at key ports from Monday, NTB news agency said.

Tankers Roll in Britain

Britain’s weeklong blockade of fuel refineries and depots ebbed away
Thursday amid signs that companies were having to lay off workers,
supermarkets were running short of basic foods and hospitals were scaling
down operations as staff failed to make it to work.
Some 300 designated petrol stations were being supplied for the use
of essential services only today, but it will take days for the entire
network of 13,000 sites to be refilled.
Some supermarkets were rationing food. Roads were still half-empty.
Home Secretary Jack Straw said he would head a special task force set
up to avoid a repetition of this week’s fuel crisis by improving
coordination with the country’s oil companies.
He said the government had failed to anticipate the extent of the
chaos that a few thousand peaceful demonstrators protesting over high fuel
prices could cause.
At around $1.13 a liter, Britons have the highest prices in Europe,
some 10-40 percent higher than those in other major countries.

Belgium Limps to Normalcy

Belgian businesses and commuters were struggling back to normal today
after truckers ended nationwide protests that brought the country to a
virtual standstill.
Cars, buses and trams flowed freely around Brussels, easing
commuters’ frustrations after five days of virtual paralysis.
Most of the truckers left the capital late Thursday night after their
unions accepted an $83 million compensation package following tough
negotiations with a government which refused to bow to demands for a
direct cut in fuel taxes.
Meanwhile on oil markets prices climbed again as brewing Middle East
tensions prompted the United States to warn Iraq it would use military
force if Baghdad threatened neighbor Kuwait.

Car-Free Europe — For a Day

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Sept. 15 — European motorists will be asked to
leave their cars at home next Friday in the name of the environment.
Some 700 cities in more than 20 European countries will take
part in a car-free day to raise awareness of the problems caused by
traffic and highlight alternative modes of transport.
Organizers today admitted they had been overtaken by
Europe-wide protests against fuel prices that this week turned many
parts of Britain and Belgium into de facto car-free zones.
But while truckers, farmers and many private motorists hoped
the blockades would force governments to reduce fuel taxes,
environmentalists hope the crisis will provoke new policies.
Elisabetta Zanon, a campaigner at the Car Free Cities Network,
one of the bodies coordinating next week’s event, said the blockades
in Brussels, for example, had shown many motorists they could, if
pushed, find alternative ways of getting around.
“What struck me a lot was that people weren’t so put out about
what happened. They shifted to other modes of transport,” she said.
Car bans, road charges and high parking fees are among the
sticks being tested in cities across Europe, with improved public
transport, cycle lanes and pedestrian routes as carrots.
— Reuters

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