Article 1 Objective
This Directive aims to ensure a high level of protection for all road users in the Union 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.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal This explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directive amending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences 1 (hereinafter “the CBE Directive”). Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as the White Paper on European Transport Policy for 2010 2 , or the Communication from the Commission on Towards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-2020 3 . The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019 that was however heavily influenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic 4 . In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities. Th is slowdown , that already appeared around 2014 , prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 2017 5 . In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend. In June 2019, the Commission published the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero” 6 . In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable , though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. The Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy 7 of 2020 set the milestone of reducing the death toll for all modes of transport in the EU to close to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10 “Enhancing transport safety and security” . Subsequently, this initiative was inserted in Annex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading ‘ A New Push for European Democracy’ 8 . Importantly , the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 9 in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework “(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)” . This initiative builds on the current CBE Directive which has (1) established the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed ; (2) specified the European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data ; (3) been predominantly applied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot) ; (4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving ; (5) determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime – it also provide d a (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent ; (6) raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages 10 . The accompanying impact assessment 11 to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers. One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities. While the current CBE Directive contributed to removing the anonymity of foreign offenders by impressively increasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, it has also proven its limitations since its deterren t effect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’ impunity . This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to: 1. Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules : Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reduces the credibility of the enforcement efforts. 2. Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States in the cross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directive of 2016 12 identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The main reason s for the identified shortcomings w ere cumbersome, time consuming and therefore lacking mutual assi s tance and cooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences and deficiencies in the enforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply. 3. Strengthen the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection : The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the (lack of) respect of

EUROPEAN COMMISSIONBrussels, 1.3.2023COM(2023) 126 final2023/0052(COD)Proposal for aDIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCILamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences(Text with EEA relevance){SEC(2023) 351 final} - {SWD(2023) 126 final} - {SWD(2023) 127 final}EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM1.CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL•Reasons for and objectives of the proposalThis explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directiveamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences1(hereinafter “the CBE Directive”).Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as theWhite Paper on European Transport Policy for 20102, or the Communication from the Commission onTowards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-20203. The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019that was howeverheavilyinfluenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic4.In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities.Thisslowdown,that already appeared around 2014,prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 20175. In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend.In June 2019, the Commission published theEU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero”6. In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable,though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. TheSustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy7of 2020 setthe milestone ofreducingthe death toll for all modes of transport in the EUtoclose to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10“Enhancing transport safety and security”. Subsequently, this initiativewas inserted inAnnex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading‘A New Push for European Democracy’8.Importantly, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-20309in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework“(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)”.This initiative builds onthe currentCBEDirectivewhichhas (1)establishedtheelectronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed; (2)specifiedthe European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data; (3) been predominantlyapplied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot);(4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving; (5)determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime– it alsoprovideda (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent; (6)raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages10.The accompanying impact assessment11to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers.One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities.While the current CBE Directivecontributed to removing theanonymityof foreign offenders byimpressivelyincreasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, ithas also proven its limitations since itsdeterrenteffect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’impunity.This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to:1.Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules: Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of theCBE Directiveto other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reducesthecredibility of the enforcement efforts.2.Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States inthecross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directiveof201612identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The mainreasonsfor the identified shortcomingswerecumbersome, time consumingand therefore lacking mutual assistance andcooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences anddeficienciesin theenforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply.3.Strengthen theprotection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection: The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the(lack of)respectoffundamental rights, especiallyas regardsappeals against allegedly committed road traffic offences abroad (in particular arguing about missing or unclear information on appeal procedures), missing evidence, different deadlines for non-residents and residents regarding the delivery of penalty notices/information letters, inadequate service of documents, including missing translations and problems to access specific information regarding committed offences andways tosettle financial penalties. Last, but not least, the proposal ensuresalignment with new EU law concerning personal data protection13, which was adopted in the meantime.More detailed information on how the above objectives and related problems are addressed by the initiative is presented in Chapter 3 of this explanatory memorandum.To ensure a consistent approach in cross-border enforcement of road traffic rules, a negotiating package is established, whichconsists of threeinitiatives – besides thisproposal for a directive amending the CBE Directive, it also contains a proposal for anew driving licence directive (replacingDirective 2006/126/EC on driving licences14(the‘Driving Licence Directive’))and a proposal for a new Directiveof the European Parliament and of the Councilon the Union-wide effect of certain driving disqualifications.
Revised version (Article 1 Objective):
This Directive aims to ensure a high level of protection for all road users in the Union by facilitating the cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences and by 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.
Article 2 Scope
This Directive applies to the following road-safety-related traffic offences: (a) speeding; (b) failing to use a seat-belt; (c) failing to stop at a red traffic light; (d) drink-driving; (e) driving while under the influence of drugs; (f) failing to wear a safety helmet; (g) the use of a forbidden lane; (h) illegally using a mobile telephone or any other communication devices while driving.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal This explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directive amending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences 1 (hereinafter “the CBE Directive”). Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as the White Paper on European Transport Policy for 2010 2 , or the Communication from the Commission on Towards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-2020 3 . The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019 that was however heavily influenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic 4 . In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities. Th is slowdown , that already appeared around 2014 , prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 2017 5 . In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend. In June 2019, the Commission published the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero” 6 . In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable , though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. The Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy 7 of 2020 set the milestone of reducing the death toll for all modes of transport in the EU to close to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10 “Enhancing transport safety and security” . Subsequently, this initiative was inserted in Annex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading ‘ A New Push for European Democracy’ 8 . Importantly , the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 9 in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework “(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)” . This initiative builds on the current CBE Directive which has (1) established the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed ; (2) specified the European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data ; (3) been predominantly applied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot) ; (4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving ; (5) determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime – it also provide d a (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent ; (6) raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages 10 . The accompanying impact assessment 11 to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers. One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities. While the current CBE Directive contributed to removing the anonymity of foreign offenders by impressively increasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, it has also proven its limitations since its deterren t effect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’ impunity . This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to: 1. Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules : Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reduces the credibility of the enforcement efforts. 2. Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States in the cross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directive of 2016 12 identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The main reason s for the identified shortcomings w ere cumbersome, time consuming and therefore lacking mutual assi s tance and cooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences and deficiencies in the enforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply. 3. Strengthen the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection : The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the (lack of) respect of

EUROPEAN COMMISSIONBrussels, 1.3.2023COM(2023) 126 final2023/0052(COD)Proposal for aDIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCILamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences(Text with EEA relevance){SEC(2023) 351 final} - {SWD(2023) 126 final} - {SWD(2023) 127 final}EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM1.CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL•Reasons for and objectives of the proposalThis explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directiveamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences1(hereinafter “the CBE Directive”).Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as theWhite Paper on European Transport Policy for 20102, or the Communication from the Commission onTowards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-20203. The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019that was howeverheavilyinfluenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic4.In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities.Thisslowdown,that already appeared around 2014,prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 20175. In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend.In June 2019, the Commission published theEU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero”6. In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable,though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. TheSustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy7of 2020 setthe milestone ofreducingthe death toll for all modes of transport in the EUtoclose to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10“Enhancing transport safety and security”. Subsequently, this initiativewas inserted inAnnex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading‘A New Push for European Democracy’8.Importantly, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-20309in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework“(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)”.This initiative builds onthe currentCBEDirectivewhichhas (1)establishedtheelectronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed; (2)specifiedthe European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data; (3) been predominantlyapplied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot);(4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving; (5)determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime– it alsoprovideda (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent; (6)raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages10.The accompanying impact assessment11to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers.One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities.While the current CBE Directivecontributed to removing theanonymityof foreign offenders byimpressivelyincreasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, ithas also proven its limitations since itsdeterrenteffect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’impunity.This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to:1.Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules: Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of theCBE Directiveto other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reducesthecredibility of the enforcement efforts.2.Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States inthecross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directiveof201612identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The mainreasonsfor the identified shortcomingswerecumbersome, time consumingand therefore lacking mutual assistance andcooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences anddeficienciesin theenforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply.3.Strengthen theprotection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection: The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the(lack of)respectoffundamental rights, especiallyas regardsappeals against allegedly committed road traffic offences abroad (in particular arguing about missing or unclear information on appeal procedures), missing evidence, different deadlines for non-residents and residents regarding the delivery of penalty notices/information letters, inadequate service of documents, including missing translations and problems to access specific information regarding committed offences andways tosettle financial penalties. Last, but not least, the proposal ensuresalignment with new EU law concerning personal data protection13, which was adopted in the meantime.More detailed information on how the above objectives and related problems are addressed by the initiative is presented in Chapter 3 of this explanatory memorandum.To ensure a consistent approach in cross-border enforcement of road traffic rules, a negotiating package is established, whichconsists of threeinitiatives – besides thisproposal for a directive amending the CBE Directive, it also contains a proposal for anew driving licence directive (replacingDirective 2006/126/EC on driving licences14(the‘Driving Licence Directive’))and a proposal for a new Directiveof the European Parliament and of the Councilon the Union-wide effect of certain driving disqualifications.
Revised version (Article 2 Scope):
By way of derogation from point (p) of the first subparagraph, this Directive does not apply to conduct that constitutes a failure to respect the rules on vehicle-access restrictions, in the following cases: (a) the information on the boundaries of restrictions, prohibitions or obligations with zonal validity, current access status and conditions for circulation in vehicle-access-restricted zones and data on permanent vehicle-access restrictions were not created and made accessible via the national access point, in accordance with Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2022/670 ( 1 ); (b) the driver fails to respect the rules related to charges and other fees that are to be paid before entering an area subject to vehicle-access restrictions.
Article 3 Definitions
For the purposes of this Directive, the following definitions apply: (a) ‘vehicle’ means any power-driven vehicle, including motorcycles, which is normally used for carrying persons or goods by road; (b) ‘Member State of the offence’ means the Member State where the offence was committed; (c) ‘Member State of registration’ means the Member State where the vehicle with which the offence was committed is registered; (d) ‘speeding’ means exceeding speed limits in force in the Member State of offence for the road or type of vehicle concerned; (e) ‘failing to use a seat-belt’ means not complying with the requirement to wear a seat-belt or to use a child restraint in accordance with Council Directive 91/671/EEC ( 11 ) and the law of the Member State of the offence; (f) ‘failing to stop at a red traffic light’ means driving through a red traffic light or any other relevant stop signal, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (g) ‘drink-driving’ means driving while impaired by alcohol, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (h) ‘driving under the influence of drugs’ means driving while impaired by drugs or other substances having a similar effect, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (i) ‘failing to wear a safety helmet’ means not wearing a safety helmet, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (j) ‘use of a forbidden lane’ means illegally using part of a road section, such as an emergency lane, public transport lane or temporary closed lane for reasons of congestion or road works, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (k) ‘illegally using a mobile telephone or any other communication devices while driving’ means illegally using a mobile telephone or any other communication devices while driving, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (l) ‘national contact point’ means a designated competent authority for the exchange of VRD; (m) ‘automated search’ means an online access procedure for consulting the databases of one, more than one, or all of the Member States or of the participating countries; (n) ‘holder of the vehicle’ means the person in whose name the vehicle is registered, as defined in the law of the Member State of registration.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal This explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directive amending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences 1 (hereinafter “the CBE Directive”). Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as the White Paper on European Transport Policy for 2010 2 , or the Communication from the Commission on Towards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-2020 3 . The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019 that was however heavily influenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic 4 . In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities. Th is slowdown , that already appeared around 2014 , prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 2017 5 . In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend. In June 2019, the Commission published the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero” 6 . In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable , though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. The Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy 7 of 2020 set the milestone of reducing the death toll for all modes of transport in the EU to close to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10 “Enhancing transport safety and security” . Subsequently, this initiative was inserted in Annex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading ‘ A New Push for European Democracy’ 8 . Importantly , the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 9 in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework “(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)” . This initiative builds on the current CBE Directive which has (1) established the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed ; (2) specified the European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data ; (3) been predominantly applied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot) ; (4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving ; (5) determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime – it also provide d a (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent ; (6) raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages 10 . The accompanying impact assessment 11 to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers. One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities. While the current CBE Directive contributed to removing the anonymity of foreign offenders by impressively increasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, it has also proven its limitations since its deterren t effect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’ impunity . This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to: 1. Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules : Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reduces the credibility of the enforcement efforts. 2. Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States in the cross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directive of 2016 12 identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The main reason s for the identified shortcomings w ere cumbersome, time consuming and therefore lacking mutual assi s tance and cooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences and deficiencies in the enforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply. 3. Strengthen the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection : The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the (lack of) respect of

EUROPEAN COMMISSIONBrussels, 1.3.2023COM(2023) 126 final2023/0052(COD)Proposal for aDIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCILamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences(Text with EEA relevance){SEC(2023) 351 final} - {SWD(2023) 126 final} - {SWD(2023) 127 final}EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM1.CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL•Reasons for and objectives of the proposalThis explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directiveamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences1(hereinafter “the CBE Directive”).Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as theWhite Paper on European Transport Policy for 20102, or the Communication from the Commission onTowards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-20203. The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019that was howeverheavilyinfluenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic4.In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities.Thisslowdown,that already appeared around 2014,prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 20175. In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend.In June 2019, the Commission published theEU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero”6. In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable,though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. TheSustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy7of 2020 setthe milestone ofreducingthe death toll for all modes of transport in the EUtoclose to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10“Enhancing transport safety and security”. Subsequently, this initiativewas inserted inAnnex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading‘A New Push for European Democracy’8.Importantly, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-20309in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework“(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)”.This initiative builds onthe currentCBEDirectivewhichhas (1)establishedtheelectronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed; (2)specifiedthe European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data; (3) been predominantlyapplied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot);(4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving; (5)determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime– it alsoprovideda (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent; (6)raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages10.The accompanying impact assessment11to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers.One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities.While the current CBE Directivecontributed to removing theanonymityof foreign offenders byimpressivelyincreasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, ithas also proven its limitations since itsdeterrenteffect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’impunity.This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to:1.Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules: Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of theCBE Directiveto other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reducesthecredibility of the enforcement efforts.2.Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States inthecross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directiveof201612identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The mainreasonsfor the identified shortcomingswerecumbersome, time consumingand therefore lacking mutual assistance andcooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences anddeficienciesin theenforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply.3.Strengthen theprotection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection: The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the(lack of)respectoffundamental rights, especiallyas regardsappeals against allegedly committed road traffic offences abroad (in particular arguing about missing or unclear information on appeal procedures), missing evidence, different deadlines for non-residents and residents regarding the delivery of penalty notices/information letters, inadequate service of documents, including missing translations and problems to access specific information regarding committed offences andways tosettle financial penalties. Last, but not least, the proposal ensuresalignment with new EU law concerning personal data protection13, which was adopted in the meantime.More detailed information on how the above objectives and related problems are addressed by the initiative is presented in Chapter 3 of this explanatory memorandum.To ensure a consistent approach in cross-border enforcement of road traffic rules, a negotiating package is established, whichconsists of threeinitiatives – besides thisproposal for a directive amending the CBE Directive, it also contains a proposal for anew driving licence directive (replacingDirective 2006/126/EC on driving licences14(the‘Driving Licence Directive’))and a proposal for a new Directiveof the European Parliament and of the Councilon the Union-wide effect of certain driving disqualifications.
Revised version (Article 3 Definitions):
For the purposes of this Directive, the following definitions apply: (a) ‘vehicle’ means any means of transport subject to registration according to the law of the Member State of registration or Member State of the offence which is normally used for carrying persons or goods by road, including vehicle combinations or trailers; (b) ‘Member State of the offence’ means the Member State where the offence was committed; (c) ‘Member State of registration’ means the Member State where the vehicle with which the offence was committed is registered; (d) ‘speeding’ means exceeding speed limits in force in the Member State of offence for the road or type of vehicle concerned; (e) ‘failing to use a seat-belt’ means not complying with the requirement to wear a seat-belt or to use a child restraint in accordance with Council Directive 91/671/EEC ( 11 ) and the law of the Member State of the offence; (f) ‘failing to stop at a red traffic light’ means driving through a red traffic light or any other relevant stop signal, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (g) ‘drink-driving’ means driving while impaired by alcohol, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (h) ‘driving under the influence of drugs’ means driving while impaired by drugs or other substances having a similar effect, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (i) ‘failing to wear a safety helmet’ means not wearing a safety helmet, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (j) ‘use of a forbidden lane’ means illegally using part of an already existing permanent or temporary road section, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (k) ‘illegally using a mobile telephone or any other communication devices while driving’ means illegally using a mobile telephone or any other communication devices while driving, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (l) ‘national contact point’ means the authorities designated for the purposes of the automated exchange of incoming requests and outgoing responses of vehicle registration data, the incoming and outgoing requests for mutual assistance to identify the person concerned, the incoming and outgoing requests for mutual assistance to send the traffic offence notice or the follow-up documents to the person concerned and the incoming and outgoing requests and responses for mutual assistance in enforcement of final administrative decisions on road traffic fines imposed for road-safety-related traffic offences; (m) ‘automated search’ means an online access procedure for consulting the databases of one, more than one, or all of the Member States or of the participating countries; (n) ‘holder of the vehicle’ means the person in whose name the vehicle is registered, as defined in the law of the Member State of registration; (o) ‘failing to keep a safe distance from the vehicle in front’ means not maintaining sufficient distance from the vehicle in front, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (p) ‘dangerous overtaking’ means overtaking another vehicle or another road user in a way that infringes the applicable rules on overtaking, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (q) ‘dangerous parking or stopping’ means parking or stopping the vehicle in a way that infringes the applicable rules on parking or stopping in a dangerous way, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; failure to pay parking fees and other similar offences is not considered to be dangerous parking or stopping; (r) ‘crossing one or more solid lines’ means changing lanes with the vehicle illegally crossing at least one solid line, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (s) ‘wrong-way driving’ means driving a vehicle against the designated direction of traffic, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (t) ‘failing to respect the rules on the creation and use of emergency corridors or on giving way to emergency service vehicles’ means not complying with the applicable rules to enable emergency service vehicles, such as police vehicles, rescue vehicles or fire trucks, to pass through and arrive to the site of emergency, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (u) ‘using an overloaded vehicle’ means using a vehicle that does not comply with the requirements set for its maximum authorised weight or maximum authorised axle weight, as laid down in the national laws, regulations or administrative provisions transposing Council Directive 96/53/EC ( 12 ), or in the law of the Member State of the offence for vehicles or operations for which no such requirements are set in that Directive; (v) ‘traffic offence notice’ means the first decision or any other document issued by the competent authority of the Member State of the offence to the person concerned; (w) ‘follow-up document’ means any decision or any other document that the competent authority of the Member State of the offence issues after the traffic offence notice in connection to that notice or to the road-safety-related traffic offence in question, until the stage of appeal before a competent authority with the power to adopt legally binding decisions; (y) ‘end user’ means any person who is not the holder or the owner of the vehicle, but another person indicated in the vehicle register of the Member State of registration, who is allowed to use that vehicle or be responsible for its day-to-day operation, in particular under a long-term lease or rental contract or as part of a vehicle fleet available to employees; (z) ‘Member State of residence’ means any Member State that can be assumed to a reasonable degree of certainty to be the place of normal residence of the person concerned; (aa) ‘failing to respect the rules on vehicle-access restrictions’ means not respecting clearly and visibly demarcated access regulations set for all or certain vehicle categories for the purposes of road safety, such as pedestrian and school zones, and cycling lanes, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (ab) ‘hit-and-run’ means a situation in which the driver drives away after causing an accident or traffic collision in order to avoid facing the consequences of the accident or traffic collision, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (ac) ‘failing to respect the rules at a railway level-crossing’ means failing to stop at a railway level-crossing or acting in a dangerous way at a railway level-crossing, as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence; (ad) ‘competent authority’ means the authority responsible for the registration of vehicles or driving licences, for the initiation of the follow-up proceedings or the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences listed in Article 2(1) or for the enforcement of relevant sanctions, in accordance with the law of its Member State.
Article 4 Procedure for the exchange of information between Member States
1. For the investigation of the road-safety-related traffic offences referred to in Article 2, the Member State shall grant other Member States' national contact points, referred to in paragraph 2 of this Article, access to the following national VRD, with the power to conduct automated searches thereon: (a) data relating to vehicles; and (b) data relating to owners or holders of the vehicle. The data elements referred to in points (a) and (b) which are necessary to conduct a search shall be in compliance with Annex I. 2. For the purposes of the exchange of data referred to in paragraph 1, each Member State shall designate a national contact point. The powers of the national contact points shall be governed by the applicable law of the Member State concerned. 3. When conducting a search in the form of an outgoing request, the national contact point of the Member State of the offence shall use a full registration number. Those searches shall be conducted in compliance with the procedures as described in Chapter 3 of the Annex to Decision 2008/616/JHA, except for point 1 of Chapter 3 of the Annex to Decision 2008/616/JHA, for which Annex I to this Directive shall apply. The Member State of the offence shall, under this Directive, use the data obtained in order to establish who is personally liable for road-safety-related traffic offences listed in Article 2 of this Directive. 4. Member States shall take all necessary measures to ensure that the exchange of information is carried out by interoperable electronic means without exchange of data involving other databases which are not used for the purposes of this Directive. Member States shall ensure that such exchange of information is conducted in a cost-efficient and secure manner. Member States shall ensure the security and protection of the data transmitted, as far as possible using existing software applications such as the one referred to in Article 15 of Decision 2008/616/JHA and amended versions of those software applications, in compliance with Annex I to this Directive and with points 2 and 3 of Chapter 3 of the Annex to Decision 2008/616/JHA. The amended versions of the software applications shall provide for both online real-time exchange mode and batch exchange mode, the latter allowing for the exchange of multiple requests or responses within one message. 5. Each Member State shall bear its own costs arising from the administration, use and maintenance of the software applications referred to in paragraph 4.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal This explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directive amending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences 1 (hereinafter “the CBE Directive”). Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as the White Paper on European Transport Policy for 2010 2 , or the Communication from the Commission on Towards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-2020 3 . The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019 that was however heavily influenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic 4 . In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities. Th is slowdown , that already appeared around 2014 , prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 2017 5 . In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend. In June 2019, the Commission published the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero” 6 . In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable , though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. The Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy 7 of 2020 set the milestone of reducing the death toll for all modes of transport in the EU to close to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10 “Enhancing transport safety and security” . Subsequently, this initiative was inserted in Annex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading ‘ A New Push for European Democracy’ 8 . Importantly , the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 9 in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework “(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)” . This initiative builds on the current CBE Directive which has (1) established the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed ; (2) specified the European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data ; (3) been predominantly applied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot) ; (4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving ; (5) determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime – it also provide d a (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent ; (6) raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages 10 . The accompanying impact assessment 11 to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers. One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities. While the current CBE Directive contributed to removing the anonymity of foreign offenders by impressively increasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, it has also proven its limitations since its deterren t effect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’ impunity . This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to: 1. Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules : Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reduces the credibility of the enforcement efforts. 2. Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States in the cross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directive of 2016 12 identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The main reason s for the identified shortcomings w ere cumbersome, time consuming and therefore lacking mutual assi s tance and cooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences and deficiencies in the enforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply. 3. Strengthen the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection : The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the (lack of) respect of

EUROPEAN COMMISSIONBrussels, 1.3.2023COM(2023) 126 final2023/0052(COD)Proposal for aDIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCILamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences(Text with EEA relevance){SEC(2023) 351 final} - {SWD(2023) 126 final} - {SWD(2023) 127 final}EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM1.CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL•Reasons for and objectives of the proposalThis explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directiveamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences1(hereinafter “the CBE Directive”).Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as theWhite Paper on European Transport Policy for 20102, or the Communication from the Commission onTowards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-20203. The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019that was howeverheavilyinfluenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic4.In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities.Thisslowdown,that already appeared around 2014,prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 20175. In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend.In June 2019, the Commission published theEU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero”6. In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable,though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. TheSustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy7of 2020 setthe milestone ofreducingthe death toll for all modes of transport in the EUtoclose to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10“Enhancing transport safety and security”. Subsequently, this initiativewas inserted inAnnex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading‘A New Push for European Democracy’8.Importantly, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-20309in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework“(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)”.This initiative builds onthe currentCBEDirectivewhichhas (1)establishedtheelectronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed; (2)specifiedthe European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data; (3) been predominantlyapplied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot);(4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving; (5)determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime– it alsoprovideda (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent; (6)raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages10.The accompanying impact assessment11to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers.One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities.While the current CBE Directivecontributed to removing theanonymityof foreign offenders byimpressivelyincreasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, ithas also proven its limitations since itsdeterrenteffect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’impunity.This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to:1.Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules: Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of theCBE Directiveto other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reducesthecredibility of the enforcement efforts.2.Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States inthecross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directiveof201612identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The mainreasonsfor the identified shortcomingswerecumbersome, time consumingand therefore lacking mutual assistance andcooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences anddeficienciesin theenforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply.3.Strengthen theprotection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection: The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the(lack of)respectoffundamental rights, especiallyas regardsappeals against allegedly committed road traffic offences abroad (in particular arguing about missing or unclear information on appeal procedures), missing evidence, different deadlines for non-residents and residents regarding the delivery of penalty notices/information letters, inadequate service of documents, including missing translations and problems to access specific information regarding committed offences andways tosettle financial penalties. Last, but not least, the proposal ensuresalignment with new EU law concerning personal data protection13, which was adopted in the meantime.More detailed information on how the above objectives and related problems are addressed by the initiative is presented in Chapter 3 of this explanatory memorandum.To ensure a consistent approach in cross-border enforcement of road traffic rules, a negotiating package is established, whichconsists of threeinitiatives – besides thisproposal for a directive amending the CBE Directive, it also contains a proposal for anew driving licence directive (replacingDirective 2006/126/EC on driving licences14(the‘Driving Licence Directive’))and a proposal for a new Directiveof the European Parliament and of the Councilon the Union-wide effect of certain driving disqualifications.
Revised version (Article 4 Procedures for the exchange of VRD and mutual assistance between Member States):
The data elements referred to in the first subparagraph, points (a) and (b), which are necessary to conduct a search shall be those set out in the Annex. 2. The Member State of the offence shall ensure that only its competent authorities have access to the VRD via its national contact points. When conducting a search in the form of an outgoing request, the competent authority of the Member State of the offence shall use the full registration number of the vehicle. The competent authority of the Member State of the offence shall ensure that each outgoing request includes the name of the competent authority making the request, the username of the person handling the request and the case number of the request. 3. In order to establish whether a relevant road-safety-related traffic offence has been committed with a vehicle, the competent authority of the Member State of the offence may first request access, via its national contact point, to the technical data relating to vehicles listed in Section 2, Parts I and II, of the Annex, and only to that technical data. Where it is established that a road-safety-related traffic offence has been committed with a vehicle, the competent authority of the Member State of the offence may subsequently request access, via its national contact point, to the personal data relating to the person concerned listed in Section 2, Part I and Parts III to VI, of the Annex. 4. The Member State of the offence shall use the data obtained in the investigation of the road-safety-related traffic offences listed in Article 2(1) in order to establish the identity of the person who is personally liable for those road-safety-related traffic offences as defined in the law of the Member State of the offence. 6. The national contact point of the Member State of registration shall ensure that only the personal data elements related to the road-safety-related traffic offence committed are shared. 7. For mutual assistance in accordance with Article 5c, 5e or 5f, the competent authorities of the Member States shall ensure that every request for mutual assistance includes the name of the competent authority making the request, the username of the person handling the request and the case number of the request.
Article 5 Information letter on the road-safety-related traffic offences
1. The Member State of the offence shall decide whether or not to initiate follow-up proceedings in relation to the road-safety-related traffic offences listed in Article 2. Where the Member State of the offence decides to initiate such proceedings, that Member State shall, in accordance with its national law, inform the owner, the holder of the vehicle or the otherwise identified person suspected of committing the road-safety-related traffic offence. This information shall, as applicable under national law, include the legal consequences thereof within the territory of the Member State of the offence under the law of that Member State. 2. When sending the information letter to the owner, the holder of the vehicle or to the otherwise identified person suspected of committing the road-safety-related traffic offence, the Member State of the offence shall, in accordance with its law, include any relevant information, notably the nature of this road-safety-related traffic offence, the place, date and time of the offence, the title of the texts of the national law infringed and the sanction and, where appropriate, data concerning the device used for detecting the offence. For that purpose, the Member State of the offence may use the template set out in Annex II. 3. Where the Member State of the offence decides to initiate follow-up proceedings in relation to the road-safety-related traffic offences listed in Article 2, the Member State of the offence, for the purpose of ensuring the respect of fundamental rights, sends the information letter in the language of the registration document of the vehicle, if available, or in one of the official languages of the Member State of registration.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal This explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directive amending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences 1 (hereinafter “the CBE Directive”). Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as the White Paper on European Transport Policy for 2010 2 , or the Communication from the Commission on Towards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-2020 3 . The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019 that was however heavily influenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic 4 . In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities. Th is slowdown , that already appeared around 2014 , prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 2017 5 . In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend. In June 2019, the Commission published the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero” 6 . In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable , though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. The Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy 7 of 2020 set the milestone of reducing the death toll for all modes of transport in the EU to close to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10 “Enhancing transport safety and security” . Subsequently, this initiative was inserted in Annex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading ‘ A New Push for European Democracy’ 8 . Importantly , the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 9 in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework “(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)” . This initiative builds on the current CBE Directive which has (1) established the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed ; (2) specified the European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data ; (3) been predominantly applied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot) ; (4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving ; (5) determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime – it also provide d a (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent ; (6) raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages 10 . The accompanying impact assessment 11 to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers. One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities. While the current CBE Directive contributed to removing the anonymity of foreign offenders by impressively increasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, it has also proven its limitations since its deterren t effect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’ impunity . This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to: 1. Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules : Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reduces the credibility of the enforcement efforts. 2. Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States in the cross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directive of 2016 12 identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The main reason s for the identified shortcomings w ere cumbersome, time consuming and therefore lacking mutual assi s tance and cooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences and deficiencies in the enforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply. 3. Strengthen the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection : The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the (lack of) respect of

EUROPEAN COMMISSIONBrussels, 1.3.2023COM(2023) 126 final2023/0052(COD)Proposal for aDIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCILamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences(Text with EEA relevance){SEC(2023) 351 final} - {SWD(2023) 126 final} - {SWD(2023) 127 final}EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM1.CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL•Reasons for and objectives of the proposalThis explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directiveamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences1(hereinafter “the CBE Directive”).Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as theWhite Paper on European Transport Policy for 20102, or the Communication from the Commission onTowards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-20203. The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019that was howeverheavilyinfluenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic4.In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities.Thisslowdown,that already appeared around 2014,prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 20175. In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend.In June 2019, the Commission published theEU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero”6. In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable,though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. TheSustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy7of 2020 setthe milestone ofreducingthe death toll for all modes of transport in the EUtoclose to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10“Enhancing transport safety and security”. Subsequently, this initiativewas inserted inAnnex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading‘A New Push for European Democracy’8.Importantly, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-20309in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework“(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)”.This initiative builds onthe currentCBEDirectivewhichhas (1)establishedtheelectronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed; (2)specifiedthe European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data; (3) been predominantlyapplied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot);(4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving; (5)determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime– it alsoprovideda (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent; (6)raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages10.The accompanying impact assessment11to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers.One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities.While the current CBE Directivecontributed to removing theanonymityof foreign offenders byimpressivelyincreasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, ithas also proven its limitations since itsdeterrenteffect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’impunity.This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to:1.Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules: Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of theCBE Directiveto other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reducesthecredibility of the enforcement efforts.2.Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States inthecross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directiveof201612identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The mainreasonsfor the identified shortcomingswerecumbersome, time consumingand therefore lacking mutual assistance andcooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences anddeficienciesin theenforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply.3.Strengthen theprotection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection: The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the(lack of)respectoffundamental rights, especiallyas regardsappeals against allegedly committed road traffic offences abroad (in particular arguing about missing or unclear information on appeal procedures), missing evidence, different deadlines for non-residents and residents regarding the delivery of penalty notices/information letters, inadequate service of documents, including missing translations and problems to access specific information regarding committed offences andways tosettle financial penalties. Last, but not least, the proposal ensuresalignment with new EU law concerning personal data protection13, which was adopted in the meantime.More detailed information on how the above objectives and related problems are addressed by the initiative is presented in Chapter 3 of this explanatory memorandum.To ensure a consistent approach in cross-border enforcement of road traffic rules, a negotiating package is established, whichconsists of threeinitiatives – besides thisproposal for a directive amending the CBE Directive, it also contains a proposal for anew driving licence directive (replacingDirective 2006/126/EC on driving licences14(the‘Driving Licence Directive’))and a proposal for a new Directiveof the European Parliament and of the Councilon the Union-wide effect of certain driving disqualifications.
Revised version (Article 5 Traffic offence notice):
1. The competent authority of the Member State of the offence shall decide whether or not to initiate follow-up proceedings in relation to road-safety-related traffic offences listed in Article 2(1). Where the competent authority of the Member State of the offence decides to initiate such proceedings, that competent authority shall, within the time limit set out in Article 5a(2), issue a traffic offence notice informing the person concerned about the road-safety-related traffic offence and, where appropriate, of the decision to initiate follow-up proceedings. The traffic offence notice may serve purposes other than those set out in the second subparagraph that are needed for enforcement, such as a request for the disclosure of the identity and address of the person liable for the road-safety-related traffic offence, an inquiry regarding whether the person concerned admits or denies the commission of the road-safety-related traffic offence or a request for payment. 3. The competent authority of the Member State of the offence shall ensure that a non-resident driver receives a traffic offence notice referred to in paragraph 2, where: (a) the non-resident driver was checked on the spot in a roadside check; and (b) the competent authority of the Member State of the offence has not enforced the sanction related to the committed offence on the spot. The traffic offence notice shall be sent to the non-resident driver, in accordance with Article 5a(1) and (2). The documents and information referred to in the first subparagraph shall be provided in one of the official languages of the Member State of the offence or any other official language of the institutions of the Union deemed appropriate by the competent authority of the Member State of the offence. 5. At the request of the person concerned, and in accordance with the law of the Member State of the offence, the competent authority of the Member State of the offence shall ensure that access is granted to all information in its possession related to the investigation of a road-safety-related traffic offence listed in Article 2(1). The competent authority of the Member State of the offence may consider such request as a request to seek a remedy against the imposed sanction, in which case it shall inform the person concerned in a clear and concise way in the traffic offence notice that this is the case and of the legal and procedural implications of such a request. 6. Member States shall ensure that the start of the time limits for non-residents to exercise their rights of appeal or to mitigate sanctions, in accordance with paragraph 2, points (e) and (i) respectively, is proportionate to ensure the effective exercise of such rights and corresponds to the date of postal or electronic dispatch or receipt of the traffic offence notice or the official decision on the liability of the person concerned.
Article 6 Reporting by Member States to the Commission
Each Member State shall send a comprehensive report to the Commission by 6 May 2016 and every two years thereafter. The comprehensive report shall indicate the number of automated searches conducted by the Member State of the offence addressed to the national contact point of the Member State of registration, following offences committed on its territory, together with the type of offences for which requests were addressed and the number of failed requests. The comprehensive report shall also include a description of the situation at national level in relation to the follow-up given to the road-safety-related traffic offences, based on the proportion of such offences which have been followed up by information letters.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal This explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directive amending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences 1 (hereinafter “the CBE Directive”). Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as the White Paper on European Transport Policy for 2010 2 , or the Communication from the Commission on Towards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-2020 3 . The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019 that was however heavily influenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic 4 . In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities. Th is slowdown , that already appeared around 2014 , prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 2017 5 . In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend. In June 2019, the Commission published the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero” 6 . In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable , though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. The Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy 7 of 2020 set the milestone of reducing the death toll for all modes of transport in the EU to close to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10 “Enhancing transport safety and security” . Subsequently, this initiative was inserted in Annex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading ‘ A New Push for European Democracy’ 8 . Importantly , the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 9 in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework “(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)” . This initiative builds on the current CBE Directive which has (1) established the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed ; (2) specified the European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data ; (3) been predominantly applied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot) ; (4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving ; (5) determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime – it also provide d a (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent ; (6) raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages 10 . The accompanying impact assessment 11 to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers. One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities. While the current CBE Directive contributed to removing the anonymity of foreign offenders by impressively increasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, it has also proven its limitations since its deterren t effect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’ impunity . This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to: 1. Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules : Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reduces the credibility of the enforcement efforts. 2. Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States in the cross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directive of 2016 12 identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The main reason s for the identified shortcomings w ere cumbersome, time consuming and therefore lacking mutual assi s tance and cooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences and deficiencies in the enforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply. 3. Strengthen the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection : The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the (lack of) respect of

EUROPEAN COMMISSIONBrussels, 1.3.2023COM(2023) 126 final2023/0052(COD)Proposal for aDIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCILamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences(Text with EEA relevance){SEC(2023) 351 final} - {SWD(2023) 126 final} - {SWD(2023) 127 final}EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM1.CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL•Reasons for and objectives of the proposalThis explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directiveamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences1(hereinafter “the CBE Directive”).Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as theWhite Paper on European Transport Policy for 20102, or the Communication from the Commission onTowards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-20203. The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019that was howeverheavilyinfluenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic4.In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities.Thisslowdown,that already appeared around 2014,prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 20175. In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend.In June 2019, the Commission published theEU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero”6. In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable,though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. TheSustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy7of 2020 setthe milestone ofreducingthe death toll for all modes of transport in the EUtoclose to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10“Enhancing transport safety and security”. Subsequently, this initiativewas inserted inAnnex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading‘A New Push for European Democracy’8.Importantly, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-20309in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework“(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)”.This initiative builds onthe currentCBEDirectivewhichhas (1)establishedtheelectronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed; (2)specifiedthe European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data; (3) been predominantlyapplied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot);(4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving; (5)determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime– it alsoprovideda (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent; (6)raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages10.The accompanying impact assessment11to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers.One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities.While the current CBE Directivecontributed to removing theanonymityof foreign offenders byimpressivelyincreasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, ithas also proven its limitations since itsdeterrenteffect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’impunity.This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to:1.Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules: Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of theCBE Directiveto other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reducesthecredibility of the enforcement efforts.2.Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States inthecross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directiveof201612identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The mainreasonsfor the identified shortcomingswerecumbersome, time consumingand therefore lacking mutual assistance andcooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences anddeficienciesin theenforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply.3.Strengthen theprotection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection: The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the(lack of)respectoffundamental rights, especiallyas regardsappeals against allegedly committed road traffic offences abroad (in particular arguing about missing or unclear information on appeal procedures), missing evidence, different deadlines for non-residents and residents regarding the delivery of penalty notices/information letters, inadequate service of documents, including missing translations and problems to access specific information regarding committed offences andways tosettle financial penalties. Last, but not least, the proposal ensuresalignment with new EU law concerning personal data protection13, which was adopted in the meantime.More detailed information on how the above objectives and related problems are addressed by the initiative is presented in Chapter 3 of this explanatory memorandum.To ensure a consistent approach in cross-border enforcement of road traffic rules, a negotiating package is established, whichconsists of threeinitiatives – besides thisproposal for a directive amending the CBE Directive, it also contains a proposal for anew driving licence directive (replacingDirective 2006/126/EC on driving licences14(the‘Driving Licence Directive’))and a proposal for a new Directiveof the European Parliament and of the Councilon the Union-wide effect of certain driving disqualifications.
Revised version (Article 10c Transitional reporting):
By 6 May 2026, Member States shall send a comprehensive report to the Commission in accordance with the second and third subparagraph of this Article. The comprehensive report shall indicate the number of automated searches conducted by the Member State of the offence addressed to the national contact points of the Member States of registration, following offences committed on its territory, together with the type of offences for which requests were addressed and the number of failed requests. The comprehensive report shall also include a description of the situation at national level in relation to the follow-up given to the road-safety-related traffic offences, based on the proportion of such offences which have been followed up by traffic offence notices.
Article 7 Data protection
1. The provisions on data protection set out in Directive 95/46/EC shall apply to personal data processed under this Directive. 2. In particular, each Member State shall ensure that personal data processed under this Directive are, within an appropriate time period, rectified if inaccurate, or erased or blocked when they are no longer required, in accordance with Articles 6 and 12 of Directive 95/46/EC, and that a time limit for the storage of data is established in accordance with Article 6 of that Directive. Member States shall ensure that all personal data processed under this Directive are only used for the objective set out in Article 1 of this Directive, and that the data subjects have the same rights to information, to access, to rectification, erasure and blocking, to compensation and to judicial redress as those adopted under national law in implementation of the relevant provisions of Directive 95/46/EC. 3. Any person concerned shall have the right to obtain information on which personal data recorded in the Member State of registration were transmitted to the Member State of the offence, including the date of the request and the competent authority of the Member State of the offence.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal This explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directive amending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences 1 (hereinafter “the CBE Directive”). Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as the White Paper on European Transport Policy for 2010 2 , or the Communication from the Commission on Towards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-2020 3 . The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019 that was however heavily influenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic 4 . In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities. Th is slowdown , that already appeared around 2014 , prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 2017 5 . In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend. In June 2019, the Commission published the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero” 6 . In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable , though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. The Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy 7 of 2020 set the milestone of reducing the death toll for all modes of transport in the EU to close to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10 “Enhancing transport safety and security” . Subsequently, this initiative was inserted in Annex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading ‘ A New Push for European Democracy’ 8 . Importantly , the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 9 in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework “(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)” . This initiative builds on the current CBE Directive which has (1) established the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed ; (2) specified the European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data ; (3) been predominantly applied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot) ; (4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving ; (5) determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime – it also provide d a (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent ; (6) raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages 10 . The accompanying impact assessment 11 to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers. One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities. While the current CBE Directive contributed to removing the anonymity of foreign offenders by impressively increasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, it has also proven its limitations since its deterren t effect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’ impunity . This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to: 1. Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules : Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reduces the credibility of the enforcement efforts. 2. Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States in the cross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directive of 2016 12 identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The main reason s for the identified shortcomings w ere cumbersome, time consuming and therefore lacking mutual assi s tance and cooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences and deficiencies in the enforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply. 3. Strengthen the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection : The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the (lack of) respect of

EUROPEAN COMMISSIONBrussels, 1.3.2023COM(2023) 126 final2023/0052(COD)Proposal for aDIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCILamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences(Text with EEA relevance){SEC(2023) 351 final} - {SWD(2023) 126 final} - {SWD(2023) 127 final}EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM1.CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL•Reasons for and objectives of the proposalThis explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directiveamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences1(hereinafter “the CBE Directive”).Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as theWhite Paper on European Transport Policy for 20102, or the Communication from the Commission onTowards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-20203. The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019that was howeverheavilyinfluenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic4.In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities.Thisslowdown,that already appeared around 2014,prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 20175. In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend.In June 2019, the Commission published theEU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero”6. In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable,though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. TheSustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy7of 2020 setthe milestone ofreducingthe death toll for all modes of transport in the EUtoclose to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10“Enhancing transport safety and security”. Subsequently, this initiativewas inserted inAnnex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading‘A New Push for European Democracy’8.Importantly, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-20309in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework“(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)”.This initiative builds onthe currentCBEDirectivewhichhas (1)establishedtheelectronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed; (2)specifiedthe European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data; (3) been predominantlyapplied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot);(4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving; (5)determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime– it alsoprovideda (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent; (6)raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages10.The accompanying impact assessment11to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers.One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities.While the current CBE Directivecontributed to removing theanonymityof foreign offenders byimpressivelyincreasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, ithas also proven its limitations since itsdeterrenteffect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’impunity.This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to:1.Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules: Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of theCBE Directiveto other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reducesthecredibility of the enforcement efforts.2.Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States inthecross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directiveof201612identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The mainreasonsfor the identified shortcomingswerecumbersome, time consumingand therefore lacking mutual assistance andcooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences anddeficienciesin theenforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply.3.Strengthen theprotection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection: The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the(lack of)respectoffundamental rights, especiallyas regardsappeals against allegedly committed road traffic offences abroad (in particular arguing about missing or unclear information on appeal procedures), missing evidence, different deadlines for non-residents and residents regarding the delivery of penalty notices/information letters, inadequate service of documents, including missing translations and problems to access specific information regarding committed offences andways tosettle financial penalties. Last, but not least, the proposal ensuresalignment with new EU law concerning personal data protection13, which was adopted in the meantime.More detailed information on how the above objectives and related problems are addressed by the initiative is presented in Chapter 3 of this explanatory memorandum.To ensure a consistent approach in cross-border enforcement of road traffic rules, a negotiating package is established, whichconsists of threeinitiatives – besides thisproposal for a directive amending the CBE Directive, it also contains a proposal for anew driving licence directive (replacingDirective 2006/126/EC on driving licences14(the‘Driving Licence Directive’))and a proposal for a new Directiveof the European Parliament and of the Councilon the Union-wide effect of certain driving disqualifications.
Article 8 Information for road users in the Union
1. The Commission shall make available on its website a summary in all official languages of the institutions of the Union of the rules in force in Member States in the field covered by this Directive. Member States shall provide information on these rules to the Commission. 2. Member States shall provide road users with the necessary information about the rules applicable in their territory and the measures implementing this Directive in association with, among other organisations, road safety bodies, non-governmental organisations active in the field of road safety and automobile clubs.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal This explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directive amending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences 1 (hereinafter “the CBE Directive”). Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as the White Paper on European Transport Policy for 2010 2 , or the Communication from the Commission on Towards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-2020 3 . The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019 that was however heavily influenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic 4 . In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities. Th is slowdown , that already appeared around 2014 , prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 2017 5 . In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend. In June 2019, the Commission published the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero” 6 . In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable , though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. The Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy 7 of 2020 set the milestone of reducing the death toll for all modes of transport in the EU to close to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10 “Enhancing transport safety and security” . Subsequently, this initiative was inserted in Annex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading ‘ A New Push for European Democracy’ 8 . Importantly , the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 9 in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework “(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)” . This initiative builds on the current CBE Directive which has (1) established the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed ; (2) specified the European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data ; (3) been predominantly applied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot) ; (4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving ; (5) determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime – it also provide d a (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent ; (6) raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages 10 . The accompanying impact assessment 11 to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers. One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities. While the current CBE Directive contributed to removing the anonymity of foreign offenders by impressively increasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, it has also proven its limitations since its deterren t effect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’ impunity . This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to: 1. Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules : Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reduces the credibility of the enforcement efforts. 2. Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States in the cross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directive of 2016 12 identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The main reason s for the identified shortcomings w ere cumbersome, time consuming and therefore lacking mutual assi s tance and cooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences and deficiencies in the enforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply. 3. Strengthen the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection : The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the (lack of) respect of

EUROPEAN COMMISSIONBrussels, 1.3.2023COM(2023) 126 final2023/0052(COD)Proposal for aDIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCILamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences(Text with EEA relevance){SEC(2023) 351 final} - {SWD(2023) 126 final} - {SWD(2023) 127 final}EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM1.CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL•Reasons for and objectives of the proposalThis explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directiveamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences1(hereinafter “the CBE Directive”).Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as theWhite Paper on European Transport Policy for 20102, or the Communication from the Commission onTowards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-20203. The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019that was howeverheavilyinfluenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic4.In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities.Thisslowdown,that already appeared around 2014,prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 20175. In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend.In June 2019, the Commission published theEU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero”6. In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable,though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. TheSustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy7of 2020 setthe milestone ofreducingthe death toll for all modes of transport in the EUtoclose to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10“Enhancing transport safety and security”. Subsequently, this initiativewas inserted inAnnex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading‘A New Push for European Democracy’8.Importantly, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-20309in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework“(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)”.This initiative builds onthe currentCBEDirectivewhichhas (1)establishedtheelectronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed; (2)specifiedthe European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data; (3) been predominantlyapplied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot);(4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving; (5)determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime– it alsoprovideda (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent; (6)raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages10.The accompanying impact assessment11to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers.One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities.While the current CBE Directivecontributed to removing theanonymityof foreign offenders byimpressivelyincreasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, ithas also proven its limitations since itsdeterrenteffect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’impunity.This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to:1.Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules: Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of theCBE Directiveto other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reducesthecredibility of the enforcement efforts.2.Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States inthecross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directiveof201612identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The mainreasonsfor the identified shortcomingswerecumbersome, time consumingand therefore lacking mutual assistance andcooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences anddeficienciesin theenforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply.3.Strengthen theprotection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection: The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the(lack of)respectoffundamental rights, especiallyas regardsappeals against allegedly committed road traffic offences abroad (in particular arguing about missing or unclear information on appeal procedures), missing evidence, different deadlines for non-residents and residents regarding the delivery of penalty notices/information letters, inadequate service of documents, including missing translations and problems to access specific information regarding committed offences andways tosettle financial penalties. Last, but not least, the proposal ensuresalignment with new EU law concerning personal data protection13, which was adopted in the meantime.More detailed information on how the above objectives and related problems are addressed by the initiative is presented in Chapter 3 of this explanatory memorandum.To ensure a consistent approach in cross-border enforcement of road traffic rules, a negotiating package is established, whichconsists of threeinitiatives – besides thisproposal for a directive amending the CBE Directive, it also contains a proposal for anew driving licence directive (replacingDirective 2006/126/EC on driving licences14(the‘Driving Licence Directive’))and a proposal for a new Directiveof the European Parliament and of the Councilon the Union-wide effect of certain driving disqualifications.
Revised version (Article 8 Information portal on road-safety-related traffic offences (CBE Portal)):
1. The Commission shall establish and maintain an online portal on road-safety-related traffic offences (‘CBE Portal’) available in all official languages of the institutions of the Union dedicated to sharing information with road users on the rules in the field covered by this Directive in force in the Member States, including, where of particular relevance, on how to ensure compliance. The CBE Portal shall include information on legal remedies, on any rights afforded to the persons concerned under this Directive including language options, information on the data protection rules and on the applicable sanctions, including, where relevant, the applicable non-financial repercussions, and the schemes and available means for the payment of fines imposed in respect of road-safety-related traffic offences. 2. The CBE Portal shall be compatible with the interface established under Regulation (EU) 2018/1724 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 18 ) and with other portals or platforms with a similar purpose, such as the European e-Justice Portal. 3. Member States shall provide up-to-date information to the Commission, for the purposes of this Article. Member States shall ensure that a link to the online portal is provided on the websites of the competent authorities.
Article 9 Delegated acts
The Commission shall be empowered to adopt delegated acts, in accordance with Article 10, updating Annex I in the light of technical progress to take into account relevant changes to Prüm Decisions or where this is required by legal acts of the Union directly relevant to the updating of Annex I.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal This explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directive amending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences 1 (hereinafter “the CBE Directive”). Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as the White Paper on European Transport Policy for 2010 2 , or the Communication from the Commission on Towards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-2020 3 . The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019 that was however heavily influenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic 4 . In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities. Th is slowdown , that already appeared around 2014 , prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 2017 5 . In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend. In June 2019, the Commission published the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero” 6 . In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable , though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. The Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy 7 of 2020 set the milestone of reducing the death toll for all modes of transport in the EU to close to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10 “Enhancing transport safety and security” . Subsequently, this initiative was inserted in Annex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading ‘ A New Push for European Democracy’ 8 . Importantly , the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 9 in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework “(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)” . This initiative builds on the current CBE Directive which has (1) established the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed ; (2) specified the European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data ; (3) been predominantly applied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot) ; (4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving ; (5) determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime – it also provide d a (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent ; (6) raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages 10 . The accompanying impact assessment 11 to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers. One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities. While the current CBE Directive contributed to removing the anonymity of foreign offenders by impressively increasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, it has also proven its limitations since its deterren t effect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’ impunity . This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to: 1. Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules : Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reduces the credibility of the enforcement efforts. 2. Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States in the cross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directive of 2016 12 identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The main reason s for the identified shortcomings w ere cumbersome, time consuming and therefore lacking mutual assi s tance and cooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences and deficiencies in the enforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply. 3. Strengthen the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection : The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the (lack of) respect of

EUROPEAN COMMISSIONBrussels, 1.3.2023COM(2023) 126 final2023/0052(COD)Proposal for aDIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCILamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences(Text with EEA relevance){SEC(2023) 351 final} - {SWD(2023) 126 final} - {SWD(2023) 127 final}EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM1.CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL•Reasons for and objectives of the proposalThis explanatory memorandum accompanies the proposal for a directiveamending Directive (EU) 2015/413 on facilitating cross-border exchange of information on road-safety-related traffic offences1(hereinafter “the CBE Directive”).Road safety in the EU has improved quite significantly over the last 20 years. The number of road fatalities has gone down by 61.5% from around 51,400 in 2001 to around 19,800 in 2021. Nevertheless, the improvement in road safety has not been strong enough to meet the EU’s political ambition to decrease the number of road deaths by 50% between 2001 and 2010, and by additional 50% between 2011 and 2020 (i.e. by 75% between 2001 and 2020) stemming from a number of strategic documents issued by the Commission over the last two decades, such as theWhite Paper on European Transport Policy for 20102, or the Communication from the Commission onTowards a European road safety area: policy orientations on road safety 2011-20203. The reported number of some 18,800 road deaths in 2020 was still well above the target value, despite an impressive annual reduction of more than 17% below the corresponding number of road deaths for 2019that was howeverheavilyinfluenced by an unprecedented drop in road traffic volumes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic4.In the years before 2020, there was hardly any drop in the number of road fatalities.Thisslowdown,that already appeared around 2014,prompted the transport ministers of the EU to issue a ministerial declaration on road safety at the informal transport Council in Valletta in March 20175. In that declaration, the Member States called upon the Commission to explore the strengthening of the Union’s road safety legal framework to reverse that stagnating trend.In June 2019, the Commission published theEU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 – Next steps towards “Vision Zero”6. In it, the Commission proposed new interim targets for reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2020 and 2030, as recommended in the Valletta Declaration. The Commission based that policy framework on the so-called “Safe System approach” that considers death and serious injury in road collisions as largely preventable,though collisions will continue to occur. The cross-border enforcement of road-safety-related traffic offences is one of the main pillars of the system as it reduces the impunity of foreign drivers. TheSustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy7of 2020 setthe milestone ofreducingthe death toll for all modes of transport in the EUtoclose to zero by 2050 and announced the revision of the CBE Directive under Flagship 10“Enhancing transport safety and security”. Subsequently, this initiativewas inserted inAnnex II to the Commission Work Programme 2022 (REFIT initiatives), under the heading‘A New Push for European Democracy’8.Importantly, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-20309in October 2021. While the Parliament acknowledges the progress made, it called on the Commission to review the CBE Directive, as the existing framework“(…) does not adequately ensure investigation of the offences in order to enforce penalties (…)”.This initiative builds onthe currentCBEDirectivewhichhas (1)establishedtheelectronic exchange of vehicle registration data between Member States through designated national contact points, which helps to identify the owner/holder of the vehicle registered abroad with which the offence has been committed; (2)specifiedthe European Vehicle and Driving Licence Information System (Eucaris) as the preferred IT platform for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data; (3) been predominantlyapplied in practice to cross-border cases where the offences are detected remotely with automatic or manual detection equipment, mostly cameras (i.e. without stopping the vehicle and/or identification of the driver on the spot);(4) covered eight road-safety-related traffic offences: speeding, failing to use a seat belt, failing to stop at a red traffic light, drink-driving, driving while under the influence of drugs, failing to wear a safety helmet, the use of a forbidden lane and illegally using a mobile phone or any other communication devices while driving; (5)determined the way in which the offence should be communicated to the person concerned, including the language regime– it alsoprovideda (non-obligatory) template for the information letter to be sent; (6)raised the awareness of citizens by requiring Member States to inform the Commission of road safety traffic rules in force and make them available on a website in all official languages10.The accompanying impact assessment11to the first proposal for the CBE Directive of 2008 estimated that non-resident drivers accounted for about 5% of road traffic in the EU (in terms of vehicle-km) but that they committed around 15% of speeding offences. Hence, they are relatively more likely to commit speeding offences than resident drivers.One of the identified reasons for that was that non-residents perceived that they were less likely to be sanctioned when driving in a Member State where they did not reside and that they were less likely to face judicial action if they did not pay fines imposed by foreign authorities.While the current CBE Directivecontributed to removing theanonymityof foreign offenders byimpressivelyincreasing the number of investigated cross-border cases, ithas also proven its limitations since itsdeterrenteffect was not sufficient to remove the offenders’impunity.This initiative aims at further enhancing road safety by extending the scope of the CBE Directive to other road-safety-related traffic offences and streamlining (i.e. simplifying, digitising and refining) the investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences committed abroad, thus facilitating the cross-border enforcement of sanctions. It also aims to improve the protection of fundamental rights of non-resident drivers. The objectives to unlock the full potential of the Directive are to:1.Increase compliance of non-resident drivers with additional road-safety-related traffic rules: Dangerous behaviour plays a role in a high number of road fatalities and serious injuries. Preventing such dangerous behaviour through extending the scope of theCBE Directiveto other road-safety-related offences and thus reducing impunity is key. When Member States cannot effectively penalise offenders from other Member States to ensure equal treatment of resident and non-resident drivers, this seriously reducesthecredibility of the enforcement efforts.2.Streamline mutual assistance procedures between Member States inthecross-border investigation of road-safety-related traffic offences: The evaluation of the CBE Directiveof201612identified the following main reasons preventing justice from being applied to non-resident offenders: (1) around half of detected road traffic offences committed by non-residents was not investigated; (2) around half of the financial penalties for those road traffic offences that had been investigated were not successfully enforced; (3) almost all offences where offenders refused to pay financial penalties were not enforced - the successfully enforced penalties were essentially due to voluntary payments. The mainreasonsfor the identified shortcomingswerecumbersome, time consumingand therefore lacking mutual assistance andcooperation between Member States in investigating road-safety-related traffic offences anddeficienciesin theenforcement of sanctions after exchanging vehicle registration data, especially where different legal liability regimes apply.3.Strengthen theprotection of fundamental rights of non-resident offenders, including alignment with new EU rules on personal data protection: The Commission received a number of citizens' complaints on the(lack of)respectoffundamental rights, especiallyas regardsappeals against allegedly committed road traffic offences abroad (in particular arguing about missing or unclear information on appeal procedures), missing evidence, different deadlines for non-residents and residents regarding the delivery of penalty notices/information letters, inadequate service of documents, including missing translations and problems to access specific information regarding committed offences andways tosettle financial penalties. Last, but not least, the proposal ensuresalignment with new EU law concerning personal data protection13, which was adopted in the meantime.More detailed information on how the above objectives and related problems are addressed by the initiative is presented in Chapter 3 of this explanatory memorandum.To ensure a consistent approach in cross-border enforcement of road traffic rules, a negotiating package is established, whichconsists of threeinitiatives – besides thisproposal for a directive amending the CBE Directive, it also contains a proposal for anew driving licence directive (replacingDirective 2006/126/EC on driving licences14(the‘Driving Licence Directive’))and a proposal for a new Directiveof the European Parliament and of the Councilon the Union-wide effect of certain driving disqualifications.
Revised version (Article 9 Delegated acts):
The Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 10 to amend the Annex by updating it in the light of technical progress or where this is required by legal acts of the Union directly relevant to the updating of the Annex.
Article 10 Exercise of the delegation
1. The power to adopt delegated acts is conferred on the Commission subject to the conditions laid down in this Article. 2. The power to adopt delegated acts referred to in Article 9 shall be conferred on the Commission for a period of five years from 13 March 2015. The Commission shall draw up a report in respect of the delegation of power not later than nine months before the end of the five-year period. The delegation of power shall be tacitly extended for periods of an identical duration, unless the European Parliament or the Council opposes such extension not later than three months before the end of each period. 3. The delegation of power referred to in Article 9 may be revoked at any time by the European Parliament or by the Council. A decision to revoke shall put an end to the delegation of the power specified in that decision. It shall take effect on the day following the publication of the decision in the Official Journal of the European Union or at a later date specified therein. It shall not affect the validity of any delegated acts already in force. 4. It is of particular importance that the Commission follow its usual practice and carry out consultations with experts, including Member States' experts, before adopting those delegated acts. As soon as it adopts a delegated act, the Commission shall notify it simultaneously to the European Parliament and to the Council. 5. A delegated act adopted pursuant to Article 9 shall enter into force only if no objection has been expressed either by the European Parliament or the Council within a period of two months of notification of that act to the European Parliament and the Council or if, before the expiry of that period, the European Parliament and the Council have both informed the Commission that they will not object. That period shall be extended by two months at the initiative of the European Parliament or of the Council.