According to figures released from the Department for Transport (DfT), lorries from the EU states which joined the European Union in May 2004, have shown an enormous growth in journeys to the UK.
The statistics were released in the DfT’s ‘Road Goods Vehicles Travelling to Mainland Europe: Q3 2005’ report. It found that in the third quarter of 2005, Polish vehicles doubled compared with 2004, numbers of Hungarian vehicles rose by 80 per cent and vehicles from the Czech Republic by 62 per cent over the same period.
It also found that lorries from the ten accession states, now constitute 9 per cent of all traffic to mainland Europe compared with just 1.5 per cent in 1999.
The Freight Transport Association (FTA) warns that the increasing presence of these vehicles in the UK is having a damaging impact on the domestic UK road transport industry.
