On the proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Union-wide effect of certain driving disqualifications

Background to the Proposal

Over the last two decades, the improvement of road safety and the reduction of the number of road fatalities have been at the heart of the Union’s transport policies. A steady reduction in road fatalities has indeed taken place, from 51,400 in 2001 to 19,800 in 2021 - this fell however slightly short of the EU target of a 75% reduction between 2001 and 2020. In recent years, the decline in fatalities has showed signs of slowing down.

In that context, EU Transport Ministers issued a ministerial declaration in Valetta in 2017 that called on the Commission to explore the further strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework, in particular with regard to the mutual recognition of driving disqualifications of non-resident drivers. At present, if a driver commits an offence outside the Member State where his or her driving licence is issued (typically the Member State of residence) and consequently has their driving licence suspended for 6 months, for example, that suspension will most of the time only be valid in the Member State where the offence was committed. The person in question would still be free to drive in all other EU Member States, including the Member State where they usually live.

This proposal on the Union-wide effect of driving disqualifications currently under consideration [COM(2023)0128] therefore seeks to put an end to this situation of impunity for non-resident drivers. It is part of a broader ‘road safety package’ unveiled in March 2023, containing three pieces of interlinked legislation. The package includes two other proposals, respectively on driving licences [updating Directive 2006/126/EC] and on cross-border exchange (CBE) of information on road safety-related traffic offences [updating Directive (EU) 2015/413].

Directive 2006/126/EC on driving licences, namely in Article 11(4), tried to take some steps towards regulating EU-wide driving disqualifications but its wording is considered insufficiently clear and has not been as effective as it was hoped.

Content of the Proposal

The proposal’s ultimate objective is to increase road safety by cutting down on prevailing acts of impunity by reckless driving while abroad. It does so by creating a framework for providing EU-wide effect to any decision to withdraw, suspend or restrict a driving licence of a driver who has committed a major driving offence outside the Member State where his or her driving licence is issued. It establishes a system of cooperation and information transfer between the Member State where an offence (MSoO) is committed and the Member State that issued the driving licence (MSoI). It lays down concrete procedures and obligations for the two countries involved.

The scope of the proposal only covers those road traffic offences that most contribute to accidents and fatalities as stipulated in the CBE Directive: excessive speeding, drink driving, driving under the influence of drugs and causing death or serious injury as the result of any road safety-related traffic offence.

Position of the Rapporteur

The Rapporteur strongly welcomes the whole road safety package and specifically the current proposal, which is the brand new element with a great dissuasive potential for reckless driving. In spite of divergent rules and scope of penalties amongst the different Member States, the time is ripe for a European approach to serious cross-border road offences especially in view of growing movement of citizens across borders and higher volumes of tourism.

Overall, the proposal sets the right approach, scope and depth of measures to ensure the intended effect - decrease in road accidents of the more severe case.

Ultimately, its success depends on the right cooperation among the Member States and the smooth and timely flow of information between them. To this end, one aspect that the Rapporteur seeks to improve is the timeframes for important stages in the procedure granting Union-wide effect to certain driving disqualifications. These are largely missing in the proposal, which puts in question the overall length of time such a procedure could take. Therefore, most timeframes in the proposal have been more narrowly defined (set to 7 working days) in order to ensure the adequate execution of each stage and consequently the effectiveness of the entire procedure. This is of particular importance to EU citizens who end up as offenders and whose rights (ex. that of driving) could be severely affected if a procedure takes unnecessarily long time to complete simply due to protracted administrative handling.

As already mentioned, undeniably, the penal codes for traffic offences do vary in the different Member States. However, the proposal seeks to bring about this Union-wide effect of driving disqualifications given by one Member State and applicable in the rest, the Rapporteur believes that a degree of synchronisation should be sought within the frames of existing limitations. Thus the Member States are encouraged to try to align as much as possible the duration of disqualifications, the Union-wide one given by the Member State of issuance and the ‘original’ one given by the Member State of the offence (for example if the MSoO issues a disqualification of 15 months, and the same offence in the MSoI is penalised with a timeframe of between 9 to 12 months, then the MSoI should, within its discretion, decide on at least 12 months duration to be as close as possible to the original decision, without overstepping its own rules of course).

Another slight adjustment proposed by the Rapporteur concerns the grounds for exemption linked to the disqualifications based on speeding. The proposal suggests that for offences of below 50km/h of speeding on top of the permitted speed, the MSoI may choose a derogation. However, on an urban speed limit of 30km/h (as increasingly is the trend in many cities), this derogation is unjustified, hence at least a broad differentiation of urban vs non-urban road speed limits should be made and what speeding is ‘allowed’ to qualify for exemption in each case.

Finally, the right tools also need to be set in place - the profound improvement and adjustment of an existing system for inter-Member State exchange of communication - the EU driving licence network ('RESPER'). RESPER is to be the cornerstone of this proposal, therefore the Rapporteur considers it should be the sole means for all information transactions between the Member States, also in view of the tightened timeframes presented in this draft report.