Anger grows in Europe over rising fuel prices

LONDON -- Americans paying a record $4-plus a gallon for gasoline are feeling the pinch this summer, but it's even worse for Europeans.

Angered by soaring fuel prices, Europeans are protesting and taking a toll on consumers and companies by creating food shortages and blocked highways.

Motorists are paying the equivalent of $10 a gallon in France, more than $9 a gallon in Britain and more than $8 a gallon in Belgium.

Tens of thousands of truckers already are on strike or threatening to strike in Italy, Spain, France, Britain and Portugal.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has urged motorists not to panic as tanker drivers supplying Shell's service stations threatened to launch a four-day strike starting Friday.

"The most responsible thing the public can do is continue to buy as normal," he told reporters.

In France, truckers plan a massive national strike beginning Monday. A go-slow convey of up to 200 French truckers caused gridlock Monday in Bordeaux by creating nearly 20 miles of traffic backups. In Italy, truck drivers are preparing a strike to begin June 30.

Jerome Cordier of Unostra, the French union of trucking companies, told London's Guardian newspaper that the recent protests marked a new phase of coordinated strikes across Europe.

Officials fear that the protests could spur widespread disruptions during the summer holiday season.

Fuel costs in Europe have long been much higher than in the United States, mostly as a result of fuel taxes that account for at least half the price -- and sometimes more than 70 percent, depending on the country -- that motorists pay.

"Every time the price of oil goes up, the amount of tax goes up and it's the motorists who suffer," said Roger Lawson, London region coordinator for the Association of British Drivers. "The government should consider reducing the tax or at least not allowing it to go up any more."

Britain's finance minister, Alistair Darling, has said that a planned 2-pence-per-liter rise in the fuel tax (the equivalent of about 15 U.S. cents per gallon), due in October, could be delayed because of the rising costs of oil.

Amid warnings that the price of oil could soar to perhaps $250 a barrel within 18 months, EU officials plan to meet next week to consider solutions to surging food and fuel costs.

But experts say there isn't much the EU can do.

"What the EU can do is quite limited because this is really a member states issue because member states set fuel taxes," said Adam McCarthy, associate director of Energy Policy Consulting in Brussels, Belgium. "And if a member state tries to lower or even freeze fuel taxes, they'll then be left with a massive hole in their budget."

McCarthy, who says he now spends nearly 60 euros -- or about $93 -- to fill up his Volvo, said he expects protests to continue across Europe as drivers become increasingly frustrated.

In Spain, the situation was particularly tense this week.

Spanish consumers started stockpiling food Wednesday over concerns that an ongoing truckers' strike that has disrupted deliveries might cause food shortages.

A three-day protest has resulted in more than 2,500 trucks blocking a Spanish-French border crossing.

Workers at Madrid's main food wholesale market said this week that supplies of meat, fish, and fruit would start to thin out soon.

At the same time, automakers in Spain said most of the country's automobile plants have had to cut or halt production for lack of spare parts.

One protester was killed Tuesday night when a van drove through a picket line in the southern Spanish city of Granada. Another protester was killed in Portugal when a truck failed to stop at a picket line.