EU Council strengthens cross-border road safety cooperation

Brussels (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – The European Council approved a new law to improve cross-border cooperation on road-safety traffic offences, enhancing compliance, expanding offences covered, and ensuring fundamental rights protection for non-resident drivers.

In order to ensure safer road traffic across the European Union, the European Council assumed a new regulation amending the 2015 directive on the cross-border exchange of information on road safety-related traffic offences. 

As reported by the European Council, the modified directive seeks to improve compliance of non-resident drivers with extra road-safety-related traffic rules, facilitate mutual assistance practices between member nations in the cross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences, and support the preservation of fundamental freedoms of non-resident offenders.

How will the revised EU law improve road safety?

The revised law introduced the notion of the ‘concerned person’, as the individual who is recognised as liable for a road-safety-related traffic violation, explaining the roles and responsibilities of the national reference points and the competent authorities. It also added more offences to the modified directive, such as issues of not respecting regulations on vehicle access conditions, at a railway level-crossing or giving a path to emergency service cars, and hit-and-run issues

It further clarified the different processes related to accessing vehicle registration data and the additional opportunities for competent authorities to request mutual aid to make sure that the concerned individual is identified, the traffic offence notice reaches the right place within a proper time frame and the sanction is implemented.

Moreover, it puts in place all required safeguards to safeguard the fundamental rights of the driver or any other concerned individual, including establishing a clear framework to stop any misuse by private entities engaged in the process of road safety traffic violations and better mechanisms for the defence of personal data.