PORTUGUESE truckers headed for the border town of Vilar Formoso yesterday, to mount a retaliatory blockade of the main road link between Spain and Portugal.
The move by 10 truckers was in protest at a blockade by lorry drivers in France which has affected 1,500 Portuguese drivers, one of the truckers said.
The blockade was designed to stop trucks, particularly French, entering or leaving Portugal. The Portuguese lorry drivers' association, ANTRAM, says 1,500 of its truckers are blocked in France because of the strike, which it estimates has cost them more than £90 million.
It said 500 Portuguese truckers' managed to evade the French action. An ANTRAM official said Lisbon was putting pressure on Paris to compensate drivers who lost out financially because of the blockade.
In Paris, meanwhile, the French foreign ministry said foreign drivers could make compensation claims for losses incurred through local prefectures, which represent central government.
In Denmark Christmas-tree growers said lorry-drivers blockading the border with Germany had prevented a million trees crossing the frontier, dealing a serious blow to the industry.
"The blockade is nothing short of a catastrophe for our business just ahead of the festive season. We normally send 300 trucks full of Christmas trees and spruce to the south every day at this time of the year," a spokesman for Denmark's Christmas Tree Growers Association said.
"Apart from the risk of fir Christmas trees and spruce tightly packed into trucks rot away after a few days." He said 600 trucks carrying Christmas greenery have been stuck at the Danish-German border since the weekend.
Denmark is Europe's biggest exporter of Christmas trees, selling six million abroad and earning £50 million a year.
Thousands of motorists spent the night stranded in their cars in, heavy snow on a busy northern German motorway after a truck jack-knifed and blocked traffic in both directions, police said yesterday.
Many drivers had fallen asleep in their cars and were blocking rescue vehicles from reaching the truck which had crashed through the central barrier, causing jams of more than 60 miles in both directions.
The truck driver was not hurt.
About six inches of snow had fallen in the night on the motor-way. The Red Cross and firefighters brought tea and blankets to thousands of stranded motorists. The accident site was cleared early yesterday.