Wed. Dec 18th, 2024

Road safety traffic offences: EU Council improves cross-border cooperation

Dec 16, 2024 ,

Brussels, 16 December 2024

To ensure safer road traffic across Europe, the Council today adopted a new law amending the 2015 directive on cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences. The new legislation forms part of the so-called ‘road safety’ legislative package.

Main elements of the new legislation

The revised directive aims to:

  • increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules,
  • streamline mutual assistance procedures between member states in the cross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences, and
  • strengthen the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders.

The co-legislators introduced several changes to the initial Commission proposal, mainly aiming to clarify the scope and the definitions of the legal act. These entail amongst others:

  • introducing the concept of the ‘concerned person’, as the person who is identified as liable for a road-safety-related traffic offence,
  • clarifying the roles and responsibilities of the national contact points and the competent authorities,
  • adding more offences to the revised directive, such as cases of not respecting rules on vehicle access restrictions, at a railway level-crossing or giving way to emergency service vehicles, hit-and-run cases, in addition to accepting those proposed by the Commission, such as crossing a solid line, dangerous overtaking, dangerous parking, wrong-way driving or use of overloaded vehicles,
  • further clarifying the different procedures related to accessing vehicle registration data and the different options for competent authorities to ask mutual assistance with a view to making sure that the concerned person is identified, the traffic offence notice arrives to the right place within a reasonable time frame and the sanction is enforced, and
  • putting in place all necessary safeguards to protect the fundamental rights of the driver or any other concerned person, including by setting a clear framework to prevent any abuse by private entities involved in the process of road-safety traffic offences and better mechanisms for the protection of personal data.
Next steps

Following today’s adoption, the legislative act will be signed by the presidents of the Council and of the European parliament and will be published in the EU’s Official Journal in the coming weeks. The revised directive will enter into force 20 days after this publication. Member states will have 30 months to transpose the provisions of the revised directive into their national legislation.

Background information

In its EU road safety policy framework 2021-2030, the Commission recommitted to the ambitious aim to get close to zero deaths and zero serious injuries on EU roads by 2050 (“Vision Zero”), as well as to the medium-term goal to reduce deaths and serious injuries by 50% by 2030. However, road fatalities were up 4% last year from 2021, according to latest Commission data. This is still 9 % below pre-pandemic level, but the pace of improvement is not sufficient to reach the above-mentioned goals.The proposal in question forms part of the ‘road safety package’, adopted by the Commission on 1 March 2023, which also comprises a new regime for driving licences and a new proposal on driver disqualifications. A provisional agreement with the European Parliament was reached on 12 March 2024.

Visit the meeting page

 

New rules for better cross-border enforcement of traffic laws

Brussels, 16 December 2024

The Commission welcomes the Parliament and Council’s final adoption of the Directive to strengthen cross-border enforcement of road traffic rules.

While previous EU rules improved compliance with road safety regulations by non-resident drivers, a significant gap remains, with approximately 40% of cross-border offences going unpunished due to challenges in identifying offenders or enforcing fines. The newly adopted rules (date tbc) tackle these shortcomings by enhancing cooperation among Member States, streamlining offender identification, and facilitating fine enforcement.

Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism, Apostolos Tzitzikostas said: 

Every year, more than 20,000 people die on Europe’s roads. To bring these unacceptable figures down, it is crucial to ensure a real deterrent effect through the enforcement of road traffic rules. Drivers must know that if they break the rules and endanger others, they will face the consequences of their actions, whether driving in their home country or abroad.

Cooperation between national authorities will not only focus on the most common and serious offenses like speeding, drunk and drugged driving, but also on other hazardous behaviours:

  1. not keeping a safe distance from the vehicle in front;
  2. dangerous overtaking;
  3. dangerous parking or stopping;
  4. crossing one or more solid white lines;
  5. driving in the wrong direction;
  6. failing to respect the rules on the creation and use of emergency corridors or on giving way to emergency service vehicles;
  7. using an overloaded vehicle;
  8. not respecting the rules on road safety-related vehicle-access restrictions;
  9. hit-and-runs;
  10. not respecting the rules at railway level-crossings.

Member States will report on issues concerning offences committed by third country drivers. An IT portal will give citizens easy access to information on the road safety rules in place in each Member State, but also appeal procedures as well as fines applied, enforcement schemes and available means for payment of the fines.

Safeguards for the protection of personal data are reinforced through clear roles and tasks for national administrations in cross-border enforcement procedures, provisions on data security, clear deadlines and guidance on the language to be used when communicating with citizens.

Next steps

The new rules will be published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJ) in the coming days. Member States will need to transpose them into national laws within two and a half years, following publication in the OJ.

Source – EU Commission

 

Forward to your friends