EN Official Journal of the European Union CE 78/149

(2004/C 78 E/0154)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-2669/03

by Cristiana Muscardini (UEN) to the Commission

(10 September 2003)

Subject: ELSA laboratory — transport safety (JRC Ispra)

The Commission recently decided to discontinue the work on transport safety being carried out by ELSA, the European Laboratory for Structural Assessment, located at the Commission's Joint Research Centre at Ispra. The laboratory used to be considered the only one of its kind in Europe as regards size and potential and over the years has proved extremely useful for the Commission's Directorate-General for Transport. As highlighted in the Commission White Paper of 2001, the transport sector and the related safety issues are a priority for the European Union's future work. For this reason the decision, vaguely justified by a lack of support from the other directorates-general, is all the more worrying and deprives the Directorate-General for Transport, and hence the Commission itself, of an important research instrument.

Can the Commission say:

1. what the logic is behind decisions of this kind, which adversely affect the work of the European Union as a whole;

2. whether the closure means that alternative measures will be carried out at the Joint Research Centre to continue to provide this important service for the businesses and population of the EU?

3. Is the decision perhaps part of a move towards a gradual dismantling of the JRC, which year by year seems to be losing its operational potential, because of a few reprehensible initiatives?

Answer given by Mr Busquin on behalf of the Commission

(17 October 2003)

The strategy developed by the Directorate General (DG) Joint Research Centre (JRC) for the European Laboratory for Structural Assessment (ELSA), a unit within the Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen (IPSC), consists in focusing the Unit's work on its core activity concerning the construction and the earthquake engineering, thus maintaining and further developing JRC's competence in these areas. This strategy, will enable the Unit to fulfil the needs of DG Enterprise (ENTR) with respect to Eurocodes research, to strengthen the collaboration with DG Environment (ENV) with respect to civil protection and to develop work with national civil protection authorities. In particular, there currently is a contract in preparation with the Italian Civil Protection Department of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.

Furthermore, the continuation of the ELSA reaction wall as a Marie Curie Training Site, the objective to increase access of the European research community to ELSA, and the transfer of related know-how and expertise to Enlargement Countries are fully in line with JRC's role in the European Research Area. One should therefore be reassured that the core scientific and technical competencies of ELSA are consolidated and maintained at the highest level.

As far as car and transport safety is concerned, the JRC competence and infrastructure is not unique. Due to the decreasing customer demand, in particular from DG ENTR, and despite the White Paper on Transport (1) published by the Commission, there is no longer a request for specific JRC support. In fact, transport safety is a multi-disciplinary topic in which structural mechanics — the field of expertise of ELSA — is only one of the relevant disciplines. It plays a major role essentially in passive safety studies (crash worthiness of vehicles, pedestrian protection, safety of road infrastructures). The Directive finally proposed (2) by DG ENTR to increase the protection of pedestrians in accidents with passenger cars and approved by the Commission in 2003 will be implemented in two phases. Phase 1 will enter into force in 2005 with the set of tests and values that was proposed by JRC in a technical study delivered in December 2000. Phase 2, with enhanced pass criteria, will enter into force from 2010 with the set of tests and values proposed by the European Enhanced Vehicle Committee (EEVC). Originally, as a compromise between the points of view of the Association Européenne des Constructeurs Automobiles' (ACEA) and EEVC on the set of required tests, a monitoring committee was foreseen to follow the implementation of the Directive. However, this approach has not been retained, and the final Directive does not include such a monitoring Committee. This makes the continuation of the support role of JRC to DG ENTR inappropriate in this matter. There will be feasibility studies to prepare the implementation of phase 2 and verify whether the EEVC criteria can be really fulfilled and in economically viable conditions, but the ELSA team has not the technical skills to do such work, since it requires long experience in car body design.

The phasing out of the transport safety activity in ELSA will in fact result mainly in the closure of automotive industry research at the Large Dynamic Test Facility, a bench for characterisation of materials and structural components at ‘high deformation speed’. This test facility had been created in the context of nuclear safety studies and is relevant for transport safety studies, but it has, however, remained very much underused. There are of course other European laboratories equipped to do testing for automotive industry research.

From the above, the Honourable Member should be reassured that there is no logic of dismantlement of the JRC, on the contrary of reinforcement in key areas of relevance to Community policy support.

(1) COM(2001) 370 final.

(2) COM(2003) 67 final.