This article is from WeChat public account: interface news (ID: wowjiemian) , reporter: Qian Boyan, from Germany, original title: “EU road logistics Before the crash, the truck driver waited for more than ten hours to pass, Source: Tonline
What is the border between internal countries in the EU with integrated circulation?
This question can be best answered from the borders of Germany and Poland.
Different from Frankfurt, the city on the Main, which has the largest European airport and the European Central Bank headquarters, there is also a forgotten city of the same name on the banks of the river Oder, which borders Poland on the easternmost side of Germany. Frankfurt.
After the defeat of Germany in 1945, the German-Polish border advanced hundreds of kilometers westward. Frankfurt, which originally straddled the banks of the Oder, was divided into two cities by the river Oder as a boundary: Hexi (Słubice) in Frankfurt and the Polish city of Slubice in the east. The bridge that originally crossed the Oder River also became the most important border checkpoint between Germany (East Germany) and Poland.
In 2007, with Poland joining the Schengen area, the two cities that have been separated for almost 60 years have reunited, and the artificial border has finally disappeared. Overnight, almost 800 local border checkers were unemployed. There are no more cold speed bumps and barriers. There is only a sign on the Aude River Bridge that says “Swubice and Frankfurt, no border”, reminding people that this was once the border. Above the logo is the EU flag of Venus on a blue background.
However, since last week, the Oder River Bridge seems to have returned to the “cold war era”.
80 temporarily recruited border inspection personnel and several quarantine personnel in protective clothing stopped all vehicles on the Polish side of the bridge. According to the blockade issued by the Polish government on March 14, all persons except their own residents are not allowed to enter Poland, with the exception of a few groups such as cargo transport vehicles.
For truck drivers, measures such as temperature detection, cargo declaration, and manual filling out of detailed personal information forms are required to facilitate tracking.
The resumption of border controls has directly led to widespread congestion.
As the main road linking the core area of the European Union with Eastern Europe and Russia in the European highway network, the E30 Expressway to which the Oder River Bridge belongs is not only the highest level highway in the EU, but also the only way for the three Baltic countries to enter the core area of the EU aisle. Since Poland joined the Schengen areaAfter that, the average daily traffic volume of the E30 Oder River section increased from 25,000 vehicles to more than 40,000 vehicles today.
Every morning at 6 am, the length of traffic jams of freight vehicles on the two-lane, four-lane E30 highway Oder River continues to increase from hundreds of meters. At noon, the length of the congestion began to exceed 40 kilometers. At the peak hour in the evening, the immovable convoy directly blocked the Berlin Ring Expressway, 70 kilometers away.
In fact, as long as the real-time traffic conditions on Google Maps are turned on, whether it is the E30 highway on the German-Polish border, the Strasbourg-Rhine bridge across the German-French border, or Brunner across the Italian-Austrian border across the Alps All sections of the mountain pass are congested bright red.
Among them, the neighbouring Italy, the worst-affected country, and Austria, which declared an early blockade of the border, have set up checkpoints in the Brunner Pass and South Tyrol. The length of congested traffic in these areas is generally more than 80 kilometers.
“ (March 21-22) this weekend, the traffic flow at some of our crossings exceeded 40 kilometers. The driver ’s The waiting time is more than 18 hours, and this (case) must stop! “European Commission President Von Delane’s speech is enough to show how urgent the situation is.
Congested traffic on the E30 highway. Source MDR
Image source: T Online
This is exactly the true portrayal of the name of the EU’s internal market after the EU countries have declared blockades.
As the epidemic of the new crown is getting worse, the major EU countries followed suit last week by announcing a footstep ban in Italy or by banning a rally of two or more people in Germany. With the closure of a series of public places such as restaurants, bars, and fast food restaurants, supermarkets and the food retail industry have ushered in substantial performance growth.
According to the “Daily Mirror” report, the retail sales of supermarkets in Berlin alone increased by more than one-third year-on-year due to the impact of the epidemic in the first half of March. Hoarding has left pasta containers empty and permanently out of toilet paper.
“Why are our supermarkets so stupid?” On Twitter and talk shows in European countries, questions about why retailers do n’t increase purchase frequency and increase orders are always a hot topic.
Actually, all European retailers are placing additional orders and all logistics providers are overloaded, but the real bottleneck is that pasta and toilet paper are being blocked along the borders of countries, along with trucks carrying them.
The developed highway network, the unified management of the European transport network TEN-T, the scattered population clusters, and the relatively small area of the country all make road transportation an indispensable part of the EU’s internal freight market. Shake the core position.
According to the public information of Eurostat, in 2019, 77% of the goods circulation in the EU internal market will be completed by road traffic, and railway and inland shipping will account for 17% and 6% respectively. As the core country of the European Union, road logistics accounts for 86%.
Whether it is macaroni mainly produced in Italy, or tissue fiber raw material imported from the Netherlands. Thanks to the borderless internal market that has been promoted for more than two decades, the daily dependence of daily necessities in European countries is extremely high.
The most typical example is that after Poland’s closure, the three Baltic countries have become EU islands. Estonia, once cut off on the road, had to even send a ship on March 20Nationals and daily necessities were transported from Germany to the capital Riga through the Baltic Sea, while Lithuanian authorities estimated that 420 trucks were blocked daily at the German-Polish border and could not return.
The three most severely congested sections are Frankfurt on the German-Polish border, the Austria-Hungarian border and the Brunner Pass. The three road sections are the main land hubs of Germany and France, the core regions of the EU to the three Baltic countries, the Balkan Peninsula and the Apennine Peninsula. Source: EU
On one side are road logistics that are not allowed to be interrupted, and on the other side are increasingly strict border controls. Truck drivers are working under pressure from both ends.
On the German TV station RTL Weekend’s “Heroes during the Epidemic” show and Twitter search, in addition to the frontline medical staff, truck drivers are well deserved second group.
“Whatever happens, we just keep driving.” Karlhubert Dischinger, a 52-year-old transportation company owner and driver, remained simple and optimistic about the camera: “The virus is not a gospel or a curse for the logistics industry. This is a huge challenge. But it’s also an opportunity to show people the importance of our driver’s job, and we’re ready. “
However, optimism is still hard to beat the difficult conditions at the border.
Since March 17, the German Defense Forces and the German Red Cross have dispatched a large number of soldiers and volunteers to the E30 highway. The purpose is not to maintain order, but to provide drivers with necessary food and water services.
But waiting for more than ten hours is not all that drivers have to face. Due to the initial management chaos and the absence of coordination between Germany and Poland.
The two bridges across the Aude River in Frankfurt were forcibly divided into urban bridges without notice, allowing only passenger vehicles to pass, while the E30 highway was open to freight vehicles. In the webcast of the Daily Mirror, a freight driver from Belarus was spending 9 hoursHe was told that he was on the verge of crashing after crossing the border.
What worsens the congestion is that passenger vehicles, especially those returning home in Poland, have a higher priority to pass than freight. All cargo vehicles are required to wait for passenger vehicles to pass in the slow lane and emergency parking lanes.
“We did that. I have waited 19 hours. We called our boss for help. The boss promised to come and help us, but in fact nothing came.” Behind the updated status is the anxiety of truck drivers: more than ten hours of waiting may mean that diesel is about to hit the bottom. For drivers transporting French fruits and German cucumbers, the exhaustion of diesel also represents refrigeration. The shutdown of the system and the cost of the entire truckload were lost.
In addition, compared with German drivers who calmly brush their phones because their wages are tied to driving time, transportation companies in Eastern Europe often pay drivers’ salaries based on mileage. Long congestion also means a huge amount of time for individual drivers. cost.
In order to improve the congestion on the internal borders and ensure the smooth flow of goods, the Ministers of Transport of the EU countries have held a ministerial meeting on March 19 and agreed in principle to establish a green channel mechanism to give all goods transportation preferential treatment for fast customs clearance. condition.
But as of press time, The EU countries have not yet reached a final agreement on how to set up green channel preferential conditions and on which levels to set up green channels. Taking the E60 highway connecting Austria and Hungary as an example, the Hungarian government temporarily announced the opening of the border on the night of March 17, which greatly eased the traffic situation to Budapest. However, on March 18, the side of the checkpoint where the border inspection was resumed again appeared more than 30 kilometers of congestion. The E30 highway is also the most important lifeline of traffic on the road from the core EU countries to the Balkans.
The Brunner Pass at the Austria-Italy border. Image source: salto
E60 at the Austria-Hungarian border. Source: Visagrad
On March 23, the European Commission, dissatisfied with the status quo, once again urged 27 member states to lift border restrictions and allow freight vehicles to complete customs clearance within 15 minutes. In addition, with the relaxation of the export ban on medical supplies in Germany and Austria, the European Commission also requires that the green channel should be kept open to vehicles carrying any supplies.
However, as Dirk Engelhardt, president of the German Freight Logistics Association, said: “(The Commission’s) direction is correct, but the ministers’ resolutions are still just scratching the surface.” The German Transport Industry Association has previously stated that due to the Industry and automotive supply chain shutdown, the major logistics companies actually have spare capacity to fill the increased transportation demand of the retail industry, but the biggest problem lies with the people themselves.
“When a Polish or Czech driver returns to his hometown after receiving the goods, he must accept 14 days of self-segregation.” Frank Huster, chairman of the German Transport Industry Association, pointed out that the immediate problem is the shortage of truck drivers. This also means that every Eastern European driver’s return trip is a one-way ticket, and even if the driver is in full health, he will not be able to work for two weeks. Freight drivers in Eastern Europe are being consumed like consumables on the battlefield.
For a long time, there has been a wide range of shortages of freight drivers with poor salary and professional image. According to the statistics of the German Transport Industry Association, nearly 30,000 professional drivers replenish only 15,000 fresh blood each year after retirement. Within the European Union, statistics from the industry association IRU show that the average age of freight drivers in Europe is 47 years old. According to the calculation of the current age structure, there will be 185,000 job gaps in this industry in Europe by 2027.
Whether it is a short-haul freight close to 2,000 euros before the monthly salary before tax, or long-distance freightThe pre-tax treatment of around 4500 euros has failed to attract young Europeans to enter the logistics industry. Digging people from Eastern European countries has also become the only option for developed Western European countries.
At present, 20% of the 500,000 professional freight drivers with social security in Germany are from Eastern European countries, mainly Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic. Half of the current gap in the logistics industry across Europe is being filled by drivers from Poland and Romania.
The new crown epidemic exposed the flaws in the personnel structure of the logistics industry. On March 18, when the Polish government declared that all returnees needed 14 days of quarantine after announcing the border blockade, almost all trucks with Polish licenses in Germany and France rushed to the border regardless of whether they were loaded or not. Hope Go home before the day-to-day policies change.
Who will fill the driver ’s job gap that has become more intense after the absence of Eastern European drivers? German Transport Minister Scheuer’s suggestion was to use the Wehrmacht soldiers to act as auto soldiers, while Austria’s answer was to relax traffic regulations for truck drivers, including that freight drivers must not work more than 56 hours per week for two consecutive working hours. No more than 90 hours, no more than 11 hours of driving time per day, and a mandatory 15-minute rest after 4.5 hours of driving time. The Austrian side has announced that it will suspend these hard rules within 30 days and ensure that goods are flown through overtime by freight drivers.
However, as Merkel announced on March 22 that bans for more than two people in Germany will be banned, even domestic freight drivers will soon face a more difficult question: who will protect the drivers’ food, drink and drink .
Merkel’s ban has caused almost all food and beverage establishments in service areas on the highway to remain closed. Currently, only convenience stores, vending machines, and self-service public toilets near gas stations remain open.
As stated on Twitter under the subheading “Heroes during the Epidemic”, who will protect the rights of those who live in our lives?
This article is from WeChat public account: Interface News (ID: wowjiemian) , reporter: Qian Boyan, from Germany