[pic] | COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES |

Brussels, 13.12.2007

COM(2007) 795 final

REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL

ON THE APPLICATION BY THE MEMBER STATES OF COUNCIL DIRECTIVE 95/50/EC ON UNIFORM PROCEDURES FOR CHECKS ON THE TRANSPORT OF DANGEROUS GOODS BY ROAD

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION 3

2. BACKGROUND 3

3. DIRECTIVE 95/50/EC 4

4. REPORTS FROM THE MEMBER STATES 4

5. CALCULATION OF DATA 5

6. FREQUENCY OF CHECKS IN THE MEMBER STATES 5

7. THE PROPORTION OF TRANSPORT OPERATIONS INFRINGING THE LEGISLATION 6

8. PENALTIES 6

9. CONCLUSIONS 7

ANNEX 1: TIME SERIES (1997 – 2005) OF THE NUMBER OF CHECKS INFINGEMENTS AND PENALTIES REGISTERED IN EACH MEMBER STATE 8

ANNEX II: NUMBER OF CHECKS PER NUMBER OF JOURNEYS MADE BY VEHICLES TRANSPORTING DANGEROUS GOODS (%) 2003-2005 (NEW MEMBER STATES 2004-2005) 10

ANNEX III: NUMBER OF CHECKS AND PROPORTION OF FOREIGN VEHICLES (2003–2005) 11

ANNEV IV: NUMBER OF INFRINGEMENTS PER CHECK 2003-2005 12

ANNEX V: PENALTIES BY TYPE 2003-2005 13

1. INTRODUCTION

Council Directive 95/50/EC on uniform procedures for checks on the transport of dangerous goods by road was adopted on 6 October 1995[1] and Member States had to bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with it by 1 January 1997.

Directive 95/50/EC provides that each Member State has to send the Commission for each calendar year not later than twelve months after the end of that year a report on the application of this Directive[2]. The Directive also provides that the Commission has to send the European Parliament and the Council at least every three years a report on the application of the Directive by the Member States[3].

The report from the Commission is based on the annual reports received from the Member States. This is the third report on the application of Council Directive 95/50/EC in the Member States and it covers years 2003-2005. The first report[4] covered years 1997-1998 and the second report[5] years 1999-2002. Due to the enlargement of the EU on 1 May 2004 ten new Member States appear in this report. New Member States were only obliged to provide data for the years 2004 and 2005.

2. BACKGROUND

Council Directive 94/55/EC of 21 November 1994 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States with regard to the transport of dangerous goods by road[6], as amended[7], introduced harmonised rules for the transportation of dangerous goods between the Member States as well as nationally within the Member States.

The technical annexes to Directive 94/55/EC are identical in terms of content to the technical annexes to the international ADR-agreement[8]. Therefore, Directive 94/55/EC transposes into Community law the technical provisions of the ADR, which lays down uniform rules for the safe international transport of dangerous goods by road. The added value of the Directive is that it also extends these rules to cover national traffic in order to harmonise across the Community the conditions under which dangerous goods are transported by road and thereby to improve, at the same time, road safety at national level.

Annex A to Directive 94/55/EC lists the dangerous goods that may be carried by road and gives rules for packaging, labelling and for describing goods in the transport documents. Annex B sets out the rules governing the vehicles and transport operations.

3. DIRECTIVE 95/50/EC

In the context of Directive 94/55/EC, and in order to further improve the level of safety in the transport of dangerous goods and to ensure that a sufficient level of checks is carried out in a harmonised way, the Council adopted on 6 October 1995 Directive 95/50/EC on uniform procedures for checks on the transport of dangerous goods by road. This Directive includes a harmonised checklist used by Member States as well as a harmonised list of infringement codes until 2004. In 2004 the Annexes to the Directive were amended[9] and the infringement codes were changed to three risk categories as from 2005.

These uniform checks concern all road transport operations of dangerous goods in the territory of a Member State or entering it from third countries, irrespective of the country of registration of the vehicle. The Directive aims at ensuring that a representative proportion of consignments of dangerous goods transported by road is randomly checked, while at the same time covering an extensive portion of the road network.

As a preventive measure, or after having recorded infringements at the roadside which jeopardise safety, checks may be also carried out at the premises of undertakings.

4. REPORTS FROM THE MEMBER STATES

Reports were received from all Member States, which are obliged to send reports for the entire period of 2003-2005. Reports from new Member States, which are only obliged to send reports for the period beginning in 2004, were either the entirety or part of the period. One Member State did not send any data.

Member States which submitted reports for all years in the period 2003-2005 | Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg , the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Slovenia, the United Kingdom |

Member States which submitted reports for part of the period 2003-2005 (as from 2004 compulsory) | Czech Republic (2004-05), Estonia (2004-2005), Hungary (2004-05), Lithuania (2004-05), Latvia (2004-05), Malta (2005), Poland (2005), Slovakia (2005) |

Member States which did not submit any report for the period 2003-2005 | Cyprus |

When making their reports, the Member States were invited to use the harmonised infringement codes in Annex II to the Directive until 2004, the new risk categories in 2005 and to present the report in accordance with Annex III of the Directive, which was modified in 2005. Not all Member States followed this pattern. Some Member States used the codes from the checklist (Annex I to the Directive), some had their own system of grouping the infringements, as had also been the case in the previous reports. In 2005 many Member States still used their old practises, but some used already the new risk categories. It was therefore not possible to create a coherent overview of the type of infringements. This would have led to an even higher share of the class "other infringements", which already accounted for 57,78 % of the total in the last report.

The summary of the reports is given in Annex I to this report. Annex I contains time series of the number of checks, infringements and penalties registered in each Member State from 1997 to 2005.

5. CALCULATION OF DATA

Member States were invited to give their estimate of the amount of transportation of dangerous goods in tonnes or in tonnes-kilometres in their report. Not many Member States provided this information. Therefore old practises of previous reports were followed: a proportion of 6 % of all goods transported as a constant average value for estimating the amount of transported dangerous goods[10], an average journey of 110 kilometres and an average load of dangerous goods of 10 tonnes were used in the calculations.

On the basis of these data the number of journeys made by vehicles transporting dangerous goods was calculated. This figure was correlated with the number of checks in the country to obtain information about the frequency of checks as a percentage of the number of checks per number of journeys. To provide a balanced basis for the different Member States, all the trips were calculated on the basis of Eurostat statistical data.

6. FREQUENCY OF CHECKS IN THE MEMBER STATES

One of the aims of the Directive is to further improve the level of safety by ensuring that a sufficient level of checks is carried out. The frequency of road checks in the Member States in the period 2003-2005 is in the chart of Annex II.

On the basis of this chart and the results from former reports it can be concluded that:

1) The frequency of checks in the European Union as a whole decreased from 0.27 % (1997-1998) to 0.23 % (1999-2002) and, with most of the new Member States included since 2004, increased to 0.29 % (2003-2005).

2) In the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Slovenia the frequency of checks in the period 2003-2005 is above 0.60 %, in Austria, Spain, France, Poland and Sweden it is around 0.25 %, in Belgium, Finland and Malta slightly over 0.10 % and in the other countries 0.06 % or even less. However, it should be noted that in some Member States a significant proportion of the available enforcement capacity is used to carry out checks at the premises. These checks are also based on Article 6 of Directive 95/50/EC, but do not appear in the data.

3) In the countries where the level of checks is highest, it is above 30 times higher than in the countries where the level is lowest. Hungary's data is markedly in excess of other Member States' data.

It should be noted that the Member State, which did not submit a report is fully excluded from all data.

In order to assess the equivalence of checks between domestic and foreign operators, the checks performed by each Member State and the proportion of foreign vehicles checked are presented in Annex III. This proportion does, indeed, vary considerably. However, as the largest proportion of foreign vehicles checked are in the transit countries, the proportions still seem reasonable taking into account geographical positions. Therefore it may be concluded that there is no indication that the checks are not balanced in this respect.

7. THE PROPORTION OF TRANSPORT OPERATIONS INFRINGING THE LEGISLATION

The proportion of transport operations infringing the legislation was calculated by relating all infringements (whether concerning the vehicle, the driver, the documentation or the transported goods) to the checked vehicle. As there may have been more than one infringement per vehicle, this may give an artificially high figure. This has to be taken into account when assessing the figures. The information on the proportion of infringements per check in the period 2003-2005 has been put into a chart in Annex IV.

When comparing the values with the results from the previous report it can be concluded that:

1) the ratio of the number of infringements per check in the European Union as a whole increased from 0.22 (1997-1998) to 0.26 (1999-2002) and then decreased to 0.18 (2003-2005);

2) depending on the country, the ratio of the number of infringements per check in the period 1999-2002 ranged from 0.02 to nearly 2.00;

3) in Austria, Estonia, Ireland, Malta, and Portugal, the ratio of the number of infringements per check in the period 2003-2005 is significantly higher than the EU average (0.26). In most countries the ratio is between 0.10 – 0.50.

The figures demonstrate that the road checks are necessary and constitute an important tool for improving safety in the transport of dangerous goods, although when comparing the frequency of checks (Annex II) with the proportion of infringements (Annex IV), the correlation is not straightforward.

8. PENALTIES

The information about penalties was in many cases incomplete. An overview of types of penalties in the Member States, which provided information, is in provided in Annex V. The most common penalty was a fine (about 80%) followed by a warning (about 20%) while prosecutions were applied very seldom.

9. CONCLUSIONS

Although most of the Member States performed roadside checks on the transport of dangerous goods in the period 2003-2005, the frequency of checks varies considerably. The average frequency of checks in the European Union, taking into account the enlargement of 2004, has increased in the past few years.

Justification for checks is clearly seen in the proportion of vehicles found during checks to be infringing the legislation, although the average ratio of the number of infringements per check in the European Union has slightly decreased.

On the basis of this report the Commission stresses that road checks are an effective tool in revealing the problems connected with the safety of the transport of dangerous goods and in improving it. However, checks conducted in premises by some Member States are obviously an equally effective way of enforcement, although this is not apparent from the annexes to this report.

Finally, the Commission would like to point out to the Member States that the harmonised reporting forms should be used and the reports should be sent to the Commission by all Member States. The introduction and application of the new infringement risk categories in all Member States will provide better reports in the future.

ANNEX 1: TIME SERIES (1997 – 2005) OF THE NUMBER OF CHECKS INFINGEMENTS AND PENALTIES REGISTERED IN EACH MEMBER STATE [pic]

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ANNEX II: NUMBER OF CHECKS PER NUMBER OF JOURNEYS MADE BY VEHICLES TRANSPORTING DANGEROUS GOODS (%) 2003-2005 (NEW MEMBER STATES 2004-2005)

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ANNEX III: NUMBER OF CHECKS AND PROPORTION OF FOREIGN VEHICLES (2003–2005)

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ANNEV IV: NUMBER OF INFRINGEMENTS PER CHECK 2003-2005

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ANNEX V: PENALTIES BY TYPE 2003-2005

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[1] OJ No L 249, 17.10.1995, p. 35, as last amended by Commission Directive 2004/112/EC of 13 December 2004 adapting to technical progress Council Directive 95/50/EC (OJ No L 367, 14.12.2004, p. 23)

[2] Article 9(1) thereof

[3] Article 9(2) thereof

[4] COM(2000) 517 final, 06.09.2000

[5] COM(2005) 430 final, 15.09.2005

[6] OJ No L 319, 12.12.1994, p. 7

[7] Directive last amended by Commission Directive 2004/111/EC of 9 December 2004 adapting to technical progress Council Directive 94/55/EC (OJ No L 365, 10.12.2004, p. 25)

[8] European Agreement concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road concluded at Geneva on 30 September 1957, as amended, the latest version being the 2005 version.

[9] Commission Directive 2004/112/EC of 13 December 2004 adapting to technical progress Council Directive 95/50/EC (OJ No L 367, 14.12.2004, p. 23)

[10] The data concerning all goods transported come from the statistical pocketbook 2006 EU Energy and Transport in Figures", issued by Eurostat. Luxembourg, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2007. Table 3.2.4c