Proposal for Directive 'facilitating cross-border enforcement in the field of road safety' : position European Transport Safety Council, January 2011.

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) welcomes the conclusions on a political agreement on the text on the proposal for a Directive which aims to “facilitate cross-border enforcement in the field of road safety” reached by Transport Ministers on the 2nd of December under the Belgian Presidency. ETSC originally gave its strong support to the original European Commission Proposal of March 2008. The political agreement reached under the Belgian EU Presidency represents a significant step forward in the political process of adopting the Directive. This comes two years after ETSC had welcomed the European Parliament’s overwhelming support to the proposed Directive with the adoption of their Report in the Plenary on the 17th of December 2008. Following the considerable progress made by the Belgian EU Presidency, ETSC has high expectations for the Hungarian Presidency to take the next steps in finalising an agreement between the Council and the European Parliament on this challenging and yet important piece of European road safety legislation. The Directive applies to non commercial traffic and should complement the EU’s existing legislation on enforcement of Social Rules covering the professional transport sector Regulation 2006/561. The Directive should cover the main offences causing death and serious injury in the EU: speeding, drink/drug driving, non use of seat belts and mobile phone use. It should follow through a watertight enforcement procedure including an offence notification step. This new instrument should fill an important gap in the enforcement chain thus enabling the information exchange needed to follow through police’s and enforcement authority efforts to achieve full compliance with the traffic law and improve road safety. Moreover, ETSC supports the incorporation of best enforcement practices into the legislative proposal. This would significantly strengthen the proposal and lead to a more substantial contribution to reducing the 35,000 annual deaths on Europe’s roads. (Author/publisher)