Published on March 19, 2008

EU Directive for cross-border prosecution of traffic offences

Busy European Highway. Photo: Bogdan Paul

The Commission today adopted a proposal for a Directive aimed at facilitating the cross-border prosecution of traffic offences which imperil road safety.

The proposed Directive will cover four types of road traffic offence: speeding, drink-driving, not wearing a seat belt and failing to stop at a red light. According to the European Commission, these four offences are the leading causes of accidents and road deaths, being involved in almost 75% of all road deaths.

Technical measures and legal instruments are to be put in place which will enable EU drivers to be identified and thus prosecuted for offences committed in a Member State other than the one where his or her vehicle is registered.

The Commission hopes that this Directive will make an appreciable difference to road safety in Europe by bringing about a positive change of behaviour in both non-resident and resident drivers. It will also end the unequal treatment which often exists between these two groups of road users, currently only residents committing such offences being exposed to penalties.

"Road safety is everyone's business and a priority for the Commission. In 2001 we set ourselves the goal of reducing by half the number of deaths on our roads over a ten-year period.", said Jacques Barrot, Vice-President of the Commission and responsible for transport.

As things stand today, a driver committing an offence under the highway code in a car registered in another country of the European Union evades prosecution, with very few exceptions, because of the difficulty of identifying them or of being able to check the address to which the vehicle is registered.

To remedy this situation, the Commission would like to see a system introduced within the EU which will make it easier to deal across national borders with offences that are frequently the cause of accidents.

A European network for the electronic exchange of data will make it possible to send notices of offences to other countries. Although this will require Member States to set up appropriate administrative instruments, it will result in a simpler procedure than today’s manual approach.

Since 2001, the EU's goal in the field of road safety has been to halve the number of victims of fatal accidents in ten years.

According to the European Commission, in 2001, 54 000 people were killed on the roads of the 27 countries which currently belong to the Union.

In 2007, for the first time since 2001, there was no annual progress in cutting the number of deaths on the roads: it was still 43 000. This figure is equivalent to five medium-sized passenger aircraft crashing in Europe every week.

Over the period from 2001 to 2007 the number of deaths fell by 20%, but a reduction of 37% would have been necessary to achieve the goal set for 2010.