Wider fuel blockade threatened

Spanish truckers want tax relief and fuel price cuts

Blockades of petrol refineries and depots by truckers and farmers protesting over high fuel prices look set to spread outside of France.

In Spain, a coalition of farmers, truckers and consumer groups is threatening to carry out similar blockades.

And the main truckers union in Belgium is calling for a demonstration in Brussels on 10 September as an "initial warning" before possible further action.

Protests remain focused on high diesel fuel prices, but both Spanish and Belgian groups have widened their demands to press for further financial concessions.

Spanish farmers want their government to create a stable fuel pricing system for the entire agricultural sector.

And road haulage unions are demanding exemption from recently imposed taxes on hydrocarbon pollution, which has hit diesel fuel users particularly hard.

In Belgium, the main truck driver's union Febetra says its planned action is also in protest at deductions from its members' salaries by the government.

Serious threat

The Spanish Government has said it will look into measures to alleviate the rising costs of farming, but has not yet commented about reducing fuel prices.

BBC Madrid correspondent Flora Botsford says it may not be able to; as an importer and not a producer of oil, Spain, in common with many other countries, has been suffering the effects of a steep rise in world oil prices.

The threatened action is being taken seriously in Spain, where farming is a key sector of the economy.

An editorial in the national newspaper El Mundo urges the government to seek a solution before the chaotic scenes witnessed during the French fuel blockades are repeated in Spain.