Trucks on UK licence must have a UK base
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• by Mike Jewell Three Greek-ownea companies whose British-registered trucks hardly ever returned to the UK have lost an appeal to the Transport Tribunal to re-instate their Operator's Licences.
DKZ Transport, Target Transportation & Forwarding and Euroline Transport were appealing against the decision of the Eastern Traffic Commissioner Geoffrey Simms ( CM 1117 May 2000). A fourth company, Golden Fruits Transport, did not appeal.
Strict regulations governing Greek haulage have encouraged Greek firms to 'flag out" in the UK. British law's aversion to this practice has been challenged with the argument that EU law guarantees a free internal market, allowing "free movement of goods, services and people".
Defence counsel Nikolas Koutrouvelis accused TC Simms of racism, saying it was unfair to classify an international company as strictly Greek.
But while the Tribunal upheld the revocations, it quashed the TC's long-term disqualification of DKZ and its director George Dedes; Target Transportation & Forwarding and its director Dimitrios Galiatisis; and Euroline Transport and its director Vassilios Tsimpoukas.
Koutrouvelis argued that globalisation and the Internet allowed companies to be run by people who lived in different parts of the world. He asked for the matter to be referred to the European Court for darification.
However, the Tribunal said that having obtained an 0licence and Community Authorisations, an operator had to comply with the law of the member state which granted that licence. An operating centre in the relevant Traffic Area was a prerequisite.
The Tribunal also said that the transport manager for the three companies, Clive Usher, had been a "transport manager of convenience" who had "no control over operations".