The New Mobility Package May Lead to Bankruptcies of Many Bulgarian Companies

New EU rules on driving and rest times threaten with bankruptcy hundreds of Bulgarian companies. The so-called "Mobility Package" supported by countries like France, Germany, Austria and Italy, provides that TIR lorry drivers from Eastern European countries will receive per diems at the same size as the drivers from Western Europe and a mandatory 45-hour weekly rest at a hotel. The problem is that carriers from Eastern Europe can not bear such costs. 190,000 Bulgarian drivers may remain without work.

Georgi Tsanov has a company for transportation of heavy goods that has worked quite successfully. Georgi has 45 trucks and employes 45 drivers. If the new driving and rest time rules of the Mobility Package come into force, he says his company will suffer huge losses.

France has a much higher standard of living than Bulgaria and therefore we do not accept the imposition of such rates artificially by some law or European regulation. We all know that in Bulgaria a driver gets a wage between 1500 and 2000 euros, while in France the driver’s wage is between 2000-3000 euros per month.

Now Georgi pays 50 euros to his drivers. If he has to raise the rate to 80 euros per day for all his 45 drivers, such as rates in France, Germany, Austria and Italy, his company will lose 1350 euros per day. In the same situation there are another 70 000 Bulgarian trucks carrying goods in Europe.

Yordan Arabadzhiev, President of the Union of International Hauliers says that a driver from a company that transports goods from Spain to Austria and a driver from the same company, which transports goods in the Czech Republic-Bulgaria destination, will receive different salaries when doing the same volume of work. This, we think, is a discriminatory attitude, he said.

Even the the requirement for a 45-hour weekly rest in a hotel would result in huge losses. The driver stay at a hotel and will have to leave the lorry in a car park. The problem is that the driver will have to hire a taxi from the parking lot to the hotel, which is an additional cost. Furthermore, car parks are unattended, and under international conventions the driver is responsible for the goods.

Ahmed Koruyev, TIR lorry driver: Do you think a driver would leave his goods, for example, for 2 days unguarded? Honestly, I would not do that, because if the goods are stolen, my manager would not recognize the missing goods, or anything. What happens if a migrant gets into the truck?, he says. We sleep in the trucks and despite that we still cannot prevent theft sometimes. In the the middle of the day two weeks ago, colleagues got robbed in Italy. Can you picture leaving the truck for two days unattended and you go to a hotel. After that, you may even find the whole lorry is missing from the parking lot, he said.

The "Mobility Package" also envisages that drivers work for three weeks and spend the fourth in their own country.

We are a distant country in the EU. We should not be put such requirements. Germany is in the middle of the EU and a trip to the UK takes different time in comparison to a trip from Bulgaria to the UK. And there are borders with delays, traffic jams ... we are away from Bulgaria for much longer.

Bulgaria firmly opposes the changes. This is our position in a block with the other Eastern European countries, according to deputy transport minister Angel Popov.

The debate between Eastern and Western European countries on the Mobility Package continues.