EUROPEAN COMMISSION Brussels, 29.11.2016 COM(2016) 744 final REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on the application of Directive (EU) 2015/413 facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences



Table of Contents 1.Introduction 2.Background 3.Possible extension of the CBE Directive's scope 4.Impact of the CBE Directive on road safety 5.automated enforcement of road traffic rules 6.Follow-up procedures in the case of non-payment of a financial penalty 7.Possible harmonisation of road traffic rules 8.Implementation of vehicle registration data exchange 9.Conclusions 1.Introduction Under Article 11 of Directive 2015/413/EU facilitating the cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences (‘CBE Directive’), the Commission is obliged to evaluate specific aspects of the application of the Directive by Member States, and submit a report to the European Parliament and the Council by 7 November 2016. The present report, supported by an external evaluation study , meets this obligation. In the accompanying evaluation staff working document, it is further assessed whether the CBE Directive: is effective and efficient in reaching its objectives to improve road safety and facilitate the cross-border enforcement of sanctions for road traffic offences; is relevant to the identified needs; is coherent internally and with other EU policies; provides added value at EU level;

has effects that are sustainable. It should however be noted that this evaluation was carried out after less than 18 months of application of the Directive by most Member States, which is insufficient time for sufficient data and other evidence to have become available for the impacts of the Directive to be fully and soundly evaluated. Still the available data and evidence can already provide some useful initial indicators on aspects of the operation and impact of the Directive. 2.Background Directive 2011/82/EUthe cross-border was adopted on the basis of Article 87(2) TFEU i.e. the police cooperation legal basis that allowed the UK, Denmark and Ireland to opt out of applying the Directive. The European Court of Justice judgement of 6 May 2014 on Case C-43/12 annulled Directive 2011/82/EU on the grounds that it was not valid to adopt it based on the police cooperation legal basis, and the Directive should have been adopted based on the transport legal basis, as originally proposed by the Commission (Article 71(1)(c) of the Treaty establishing the European Community, now Article 91 of Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union). The judgment maintained the effects of Directive 2011/82/EU for a period of time not exceeding 12 months from the date on which the judgement was delivered. The new Directive 2015/413/EU was adopted in March 2015 based on the modified legal basis, without any amendments to the substance of the annulled Directive and covering all Member States. The CBE Directive aims to ensure a high level of protection for all road users by facilitating the cross-border exchange of information on road safety related traffic offences, and thereby facilitating the enforcement of sanctions, where those offences are committed with a vehicle registered in a Member State other than the Member State in which the offence took place. The CBE Directive envisages the use of an electronic information system which makes it possible for EU Member States to perform automated searches for vehicle registration data in order to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle with which a road traffic offence has been committed. It requires each Member State to designate a national contact point responsible for allowing other Member States’ national contact points to search the information system using the full licence plate number of the vehicle in question (Article 4). All personal data must be processed in line with Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (Article 7). Once the vehicle’s owner/holder or the person suspected of having committed a road safety related traffic offence has been identified, the Member State in which the offence was committed decides whether to initiate follow-up proceedings. The CBE Directive specifies the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned and provides a (non-obligatory) template for the letter to be sent. This letter should be written in the same language as the vehicle’s registration document or in one of the official languages of the Member State where the vehicle is registered. The procedure for the cross-border enforcement of sanctions for road traffic offences consists of the following main steps: 1)The offence is detected. 2)The elements of the offence are established. 3)The owner, holder or driver of the vehicle is identified. 4)Evidence is gathered. 5)If the Member State in which the offence is committed decides to initiate follow-up proceedings, the police or other relevant authority deliver a penalty notice/information letter to the presumed offender. 6)The presumed offender pays the fine (or identifies the actual offender and step 5 is repeated, or appeals). 7)If the fine is not paid, and if the Member State in which the offence is committed decides to initiate follow-up proceedings, the Member State’s administrative or criminal courts issue a final decision. 8)The Member State to which the decision is sent (possibly) recognises the decision and enforces the sanction. The CBE Directive plays a vital role only in steps 3 and 5. Cases where the offender refuses to pay a financial penalty may be covered by Council Framework Decision 2005/214/JHA on the application of the principle of mutual recognition to financial penalties. 3.Possible extension of the CBE Directive's scope The CBE Directive’s scope can be considered adequate as it covers the eight most important road safety related traffic offences. Offences such as speeding, failing to use a seat belt, drink-driving and the use of communication devices (distraction) are a major threat to road safety and are often committed by non-resident drivers. The need for the electronic information exchange system is less pronounced if the vehicle needs to be stopped for the offence to be detected, since then the offender is identified on the spot. This is the case for drink-driving and driving while under the influence of drugs, where the driver must take an alcohol or drug test. However, maintaining drink-driving and driving under the influence of drugs in the Directive’s scope is considered as appropriate, taking into account the specific objective to raise citizens’ awareness of traffic rules and the applicability of sanctions in Member States. Some stakeholders, including Member State authorities, would welcome the addition of other offences to the scope of the CBE Directive. These include: not keeping a sufficient distance from the vehicle in front; dangerous overtaking; illegal or dangerous parking (which in theory could be detected automatically, but in many Member States is not); and ‘tolling’ offences which would facilitate the cross-border enforcement of sanctions for non-payment of a toll, especially where there are free-flow microwave or satellite tolling systems.

It may be useful to consider including not keeping a sufficient distance from the vehicle in front, dangerous overtaking and dangerous parking in the Directive’s scope, due to the increased use of automatic checking equipment. However, adding tolling offences raises the question of the Directive's internal and external coherence, since road pricing falls under different transport legal basis than road safety and its main objective is elimination of distortions of competition between transport undertakings in Member States. The same applies to illegal parking linked to non-payment of municipal charges or taxes, and to the violation of municipal orders that are not related to road safety. 4.Impact of the CBE Directive on road safety The CBE Directive is expected to improve Member State authorities’ ability to identify non-resident offenders and increase non-resident road users' awareness of road traffic rules in force in other Member States. This should have a deterrent effect on non-resident road users, leading to better compliance with the rules. Greater respect for the rules i.e. better behaviour and fewer offences, should lead to fewer road fatalities and fatal accidents. Information on road users’ awareness of road traffic rules in other Member States is not available. The open public consultation carried out by the Commission had few replies from road users so it is impossible to draw conclusions about the information on road traffic rules in force, which is provided according to Article 8 of the CBE Directive. Moreover, it is impossible to draw any reasonable conclusions about the CBE Directive’s possible impact on citizens’ awareness of the rules in force in other Member States, due to the absence of a theoretical approach to assessing the impact of awareness measures on the behaviour of road users. Nevertheless, it is generally recognised that in order to improve compliance, it is necessary to improve road users’ awareness of the rules. The CBE Directive’s impact on road safety is strongly embedded in the ability to improve the identification of non-resident offenders. As described in more detail in Section 8, the number of investigated road traffic offences committed by non-residents increased by approximately four times between 2013 and 2015 in the Member States that implemented the Directive. However, there is still a potential to increase the use of the electronic information exchange system for the benefit of road safety. As explained in Section 6, the evaluation has also identified issues that reduce the effectiveness of sanctions for road traffic offences: approximately half of the sanctions could not be successfully enforced. This is likely to have hindered the deterrent effect of the CBE Directive, which was expected to improve compliance of non-resident road users with road traffic rules. Furthermore, there are also general factors e.g. technical failure in vehicles, vehicle safety equipment, road infrastructure, emergency response in case of crash, economic development and its impact on the volume of traffic, the weather and climate change, the increase of vulnerable users such as cyclists, enforcement practices as well as the number of automatic checking equipment, the use of communication tools, the behaviour of road users and the impact of other road safety related EU law that affect the current situation of the total number of road fatalities not being significantly reduced since 2014. The trends in road traffic offences in Member States reflect this situation: data on road traffic offences committed by both residents and non-residents for 2013-2014, which were provided by 13 Member States, do not indicate a clear correlation between the CBE Directive and non-resident road users’ compliance with road traffic rules. The same is true for the proportion of road fatalities and fatal accidents involving non-residents in the total number of road fatalities and fatal accidents, which makes it impossible to provide clear evidence of the Directive’s impact in this area. 5.automated enforcement of road traffic rules The evaluation did not identify any cross-border cases where the evidence produced by automatic checking equipment was refused or not recognised because the equipment was unreliable. However, as the implementation of the CBE Directive continues, the possibility of this happening may increase. If it does, harmonised EU-level standards, type approval procedures and periodic checks of automatic checking equipment (e.g. calibration of equipment) could increase the reliability of the equipment. Member States have different ways of automatically detecting speeding offences (practically, there are no different automatic detection methods for other road traffic offences). In some Member States, it is possible to detect speeding offences by measuring not only instant speed but also the average speed on a section of road. In other Member States, legal and practical obstacles (e.g. higher costs) make the use of section control devices problematic. As long as there is no evidence of any significant impact on road safety or the cross-border enforcement of sanctions, harmonising detection methods at this stage would be seen as non-justified interference in Member States’ enforcement policy choices. It is generally recognised that the exchange and application of best enforcement practices, including the deployment and operation of automatic checking equipment can have a positive impact on road safety. An example of practice for the effective automated enforcement of road traffic rules, which is based on the information provided by Member States in the evaluation study, is in annex to this report. The practice concerns all road traffic offences which can be detected automatically. 6.Follow-up procedures in the case of non-payment of a financial penalty The follow-up procedures in cases of non-payment of a financial penalty for road traffic offences should be based on common criteria. These criteria should reflect the fundamental rights and principles recognised by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU and upheld by the CBE Directive, namely the protection of personal data, the right to a fair trial, the presumption of innocence, and the right of defence. The significant potential of the CBE Directive to improve road safety can be further maximised. Approximately 50% of investigated road traffic offences committed by non-residents are currently not successfully enforced because of the following issues with the enforcement chain not covered by the Directive: Member States’ lack of mutual assistance and cooperation in investigating road traffic offences after exchanging vehicle registration data as explained in Section 8; or decisions issued by Member States in cases of non-payment of a financial penalty for these offences often do not fall under Council Framework Decision 2005/214/JHA. Moreover, the number of mutually recognised decisions that fall under the Framework Decision and relate to financial penalties for road traffic offences is very low. The proportion of successfully enforced financial penalties in all financial penalties which are not paid voluntarily varies from 0 to 1 %. Only Germany (the Federal Ministry of Justice) provided detailed information on incoming and outgoing requests to recognise decisions related to financial penalties for road traffic offences (e.g. in 2011-2014, Germany issued 15 843 decisions related to road traffic offences committed by non-residents of which 43 % was not executed). It appears that the procedures under the Framework Decision are not tailored to the current situation where millions of financial penalties for detected road traffic offences have to be enforced and therefore do not adequately complement the exchange of information under the CBE Directive. The Directive’s positive impact on road safety through the deterrent effect of sanctions for detected road traffic offences is not yet visible and even if achieved might not be sustainable if the sanctions are not enforced. Council Framework Decision 2005/214/JHA is a mutual recognition instrument intended to cover all types of criminal offences. It is not meant to deal with mass road traffic offences which are usually (minor) administrative delicts. The external evaluation study identifies that the most significant legal barrier to the successful application of the Framework Decision is related to differences in Member States’ normative qualification of road traffic offences (criminal vs administrative qualification) and their impact on national procedures and rights granted to presumed offenders. Currently, Member States’ decisions on financial penalties can be only recognised if road traffic offences are qualified as criminal offences or if their review is carried out under a procedure that is similar to criminal proceedings. Despite recent interpretation by the European Court of Justice , there still seems to be a legal uncertainty that makes it difficult for Member States’ administrative authorities to assess whether the courts of other Member States issuing the decisions can be qualified as courts with jurisdiction in criminal matters or as (administrative) courts who review traffic offences under a procedure that is similar to criminal proceedings. Most stakeholders who have experience in applying Council Framework Decision 2005/214/JHA emphasised that sending decisions and certificates concerning financial penalties to the executing Member State electronically is the most appropriate way of ensuring effective cross-border enforcement of financial penalties for road traffic offences. The Commission published an evaluation report concerning the Framework Decision in 2008 and is currently working with experts from several Member States to design standardised forms to facilitate the procedure for cross-border enforcement of financial penalties under the Framework Decision.