COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT pursuant to the second subparagraph of Article 251 (2) of the EC-Treaty concerning the Common Position of the Council on the proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the roadside inspection of the roadworthiness of commercial vehicles circulating in the Community

COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT pursuant to the second subparagraph of Article 251 (2) of the EC-Treaty

concerning the Common Position of the Council on the proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the roadside inspection of the roadworthiness of commercial vehicles circulating in the Community

1. BACKGROUND

1. On 11 March 1998 the Commission submitted a proposal for a Directive on the roadside inspection of the roadworthiness of commercial vehicles circulating in the Community (COM(1998)117-C4-0346/98-1998/0097(SYN)).

2. The Council reached a political agreement on 17 June 1998.

3. On 29 July 1998 the Economic and Social Committee gave a favourable opinion.

4. On 17 February 1999 the European Parliament gave an opinion on the proposal at first reading.

5. The amended Commission proposal was transmitted to the other institutions on 15 October 1999.

6. The Council adopted a Common Position on 2 December 1999.

2. OBJECTIVE OF THE COMMISSION'S PROPOSAL

2.1 This proposal supplements Directive 96/96/EC that provides for an annual roadworthiness inspection which commercial vehicles must undergo at a testing centre. The purpose of this proposal is to introduce unannounced roadworthiness checks, partly on the grounds of the mileage travelled by such vehicles every year, and partly because a number of defects can be detected in this way that can be concealed at annual roadworthiness inspections. This proposal will improve the maintenance condition of the heavy commercial vehicles on the Community's roads and thus be of benefit to road safety and environmental protection.

2.2 The proposal, as amended, therefore makes the following provisions :

i. It concerns a legal framework for the roadside inspection of commercial vehicles, both passenger and freight carriage, and has as its primary objective the enhancement of safety and environmental protection in road transport within the Community. It also aims at the creation of a level playing field regarding the quality of maintenance of the commercial vehicles circulating within the Community by discouraging irresponsible operators from attempting to gain a competitive advantage by operating inadequately maintained vehicles.

ii. The adoption of Directive 96/96/EC [1] has already ensured that heavy commercial road vehicles undergo annual roadworthiness inspection in testing centres. However, given the increasing international nature of commercial vehicle operation and the fact that many of the heaviest vehicles travel 150 000 km/year or more, an annual inspection is unlikely to provide sufficient a guarantee that commercial vehicles operating on Community territory do so with an acceptable standard of maintenance throughout the year.

[1] OJ No L 46, 17.2.1997, p. 1

iii. The proposal requires Member States to supplement the annual roadworthiness test with unexpected inspections of a representative proportion of the commercial vehicle fleet on their roads each year.

iv. The proposal will allow the Commission services to review the comprehensiveness and character of Member States' roadside inspection practices through the biannual reports submitted by Member States and a copy of these reports will be submitted to both the Council and Parliament.

v. If, following the roadworthiness inspection, the vehicle does not comply with the standard or roadworthiness stipulated in the proposal's technical annex and is considered to present a serious risk to its occupants or other road users, the vehicle may be banned immediately from use on the public roads.

vi. Roadside inspections on the maintenance condition of commercial vehicles can be combined with other road traffic enforcement checks. Therefore, the overall cost to the vehicle operator and the authorities can be shared with other enforcement programmes.

vii. Targeting potentially poorly maintained vehicles is the key to an efficient roadside inspection operation; obviously poorly maintained vehicles should suffer a greater roadside testing frequency than vehicles that are well maintained. To this end, the proposal allows the authorities to take full account of the status of any previous roadworthiness inspection, i.e. by exempting the vehicle from a subsequent inspection if it has had a successful inspection within the last three months.

3. COMMENTS ON COMMON POSITION

3.1. General remarks

The European Parliament accepted the Commission's proposal as a whole on first reading. It recognised the need to improve the maintenance condition of heavy commercial vehicles on the Community's roads and consequently be of benefit to road safety as well as environmental protection. It proposed amendments primarily to clarify and elaborate the text of the proposal.

3.2. Amendments adopted by the European Parliament in the first reading

3.2.1. Amendments accepted by the Commission and included in the Common Position

Of the seventeen amendments that the first reading of the Parliament proposed, the Commission felt that amendments 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 15 and 17 were acceptable. Of these amendments, the Council has adopted the following within its Common Position :

- Amendment 1, referring to the more appropriate "undertakings" rather than "operators" in Recital 8.

- Amendment 3, adding to Article 3(2) the requirement that the relevant inspection forms are standardised to reduce language difficulties.

- Amendment 4, adds a new element to Article 3 by specifying that the roadside inspections can be combined with other types of vehicle or driver control. This is acceptable because it was already tacitly allowed for in the original proposal and accepted as such by the Council.

- Amendment 6, adds the requirement to Article 4(4) that the Member States' report on the application of the Directive should be transmitted to the Parliament as well as the Commission. The Council and the Commission consider this addition as both right and proper.

- Amendment 7, requires Member States to take account of the status of previous roadworthiness inspections, i.e. by exempting the vehicle from a subsequent inspection if it has had a successful inspection within the last three months. Both the Commission and the Council consider this to be a realistic and sensible provision.

- Amendment 9, this addition to Article 5 requires any delays to vehicles that are considered as roadworthy to be kept to a minimum and this was endorsed by the Council. However, the amendment also required Member States to note the time taken for clearing these vehicles and to carry out the necessary statistical analysis. The Council did not endorse this latter requirement.

- Amendment 10, amends Article 6(1) by stipulating that the Member States inform eachother of the contacts within their organisations responsible for implementation of the Directive's provisions, i.e. within the vehicle inspection organisation. This is considered as a useful additional requirement.

- Amendment 11, amends Article 6(2) by ensuring that any prosecution that results from a defective vehicle being identified as such at the roadside inspection may be pursued in accordance with the laws of the Member State that carried out the inspection. This point is considered essential for the proper functioning of the Directive and was readily accepted by both the Commission and the Council.

- Amendments 15 and 17, add the requirement to fail vehicles where there is evidence of diesel fuel spillage. This amendment takes account of the safety concerns of motor cyclists and was readily accepted by the Commission and the Council.

3.2.2. Amendments accepted by the Commission which have not been included in the Common Position

The following amendment has not been accepted for the following reason :

- Amendment 5, would amend Article 4(1) to require Member States to submit their plans for their roadside inspections to the Commission prior to implementation. The Council took the view that this would be too bureaucratic and hence delay the Directive's implementation.

3.3. Compared with the amended proposal of the Commission, the following significant amendments have been made in the text of the Common Position :

There are no real significant amendments. However, the Common Position has streamlined the amended proposal and therefore the Recital and Article numbering has been changed.

The European Parliament's amendments that were accepted by the Commission and which have been included within the Common Position, as described in section 3.1 above, are now found within the following Recitals and Articles of the Common Position:

>TABLE POSITION>

4. CONCLUSIONS

The Common Position takes account of all the Parliament's amendments that were acceptable to the Commission, bar one (Amendment No. 5).

Both the European Parliament and the Council are generally supportive of the proposal. However, the European Parliament's proposed amendments display a general fear that Member States may not evenly apply the application of the Directive. Indeed, the proposed amendments 2, 12 and 13 would have examiner training, infringement penalties and technical and human resources harmonised as a condition of the Directive's implementation. Amendment 5 would have required the Member States to submit their plans for roadside inspection to the Commission prior to implementation and part of Amendment 9 would require a statistical record to be made of inspection times and delays for vehicles that prove to be in a satisfactory roadworthiness condition.

Whereas sympathy can be given to the wish for greater harmonisation of procedures (training, penalties, technical and human resources), both the Council and the Commission believe that it would be impractical and politically unfeasible to harmonise these measures as a condition of the Directive's implementation.

Nevertheless, the Commission's review of the Directive's implementation will include an assessment of the proportion and types of vehicles that are inspected by each Member State, their pass/failure rate and breakdown of where the vehicles were registered. Once done, then the Commission will review whether further harmonisation is necessary.

The Commission delivers a favourable opinion on the Common Position as a whole.