Warsaw/Moscow. Poland has finally settled its dispute with Russia about the regulations regarding transport approvals for Polish forwarding agents and road transport enterprises on Russian soil. As the Polish Infrastructure Ministry informs in an explanation, the new agreement is valid for three years. Polish enterprises will receive 150,000 entrance approvals per year. 24,000 of these will be transit approvals to third countries. "We now have so many approvals for the Russian territory as never before in history", wrote the online issue of the technical newspaper for industry "Nowy Przemysl", citing the acting Infrastructure Minister Tadeusz Jarmuziewicz. Now, according to the Deputy Minister, the number of Polish transports to Russia will increase by 20 percent.

The old approvals expired on the 15th of January. This had led to delays at the Polish-Russian border because the Polish hauliers no longer had the right to move onto Russian territory. Last week Russia allowed Polish HGV's access to Russian territory but without solving the problem. Both countries had tried since the autumn of last year to reach an agreement.

Officially Poland gave no reason for this arrangement. The Polish newspaper "Rzeczpospolita" reports that Russia has acceded to the hard-line Polish position. As well as this, the Poles had played a high-risk strategy, demanding 190,000 access approvals (of these, 66,500 transit approvals to a third country). They had threatened to deny access to Russian vehicles to Polish territory as a countermove to the Russian position. This would have had serious consequences for Russian business with the West because they would have had to take longer routes via the Ukraine and Slovakia, which would drastically increase expense. "Just this once, we finally won", the paper rejoices. (bec)
_{-Source: www.verkehrsrundschau.de}

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