The revised directive introduces several changes aimed at enhancing road safety and streamlining the handling of traffic offences by non-resident drivers. The main objectives of the new legislation include:
- Increasing compliance: Ensuring that non-resident drivers adhere to additional road-safety-related traffic rules.
- Streamlining procedures: Facilitating mutual assistance procedures between member states in the cross-border investigation of traffic offences.
- Protecting fundamental rights: Strengthening the protection of fundamental rights for non-resident offenders.
The co-legislators introduced several amendments to the initial Commission proposal to clarify the scope and definitions of the legal act. These amendments include:
- Introducing the ‘Concerned Person’ concept: Defining the ‘concerned person’ as the individual identified as liable for a road-safety-related traffic offence.
- Clarifying roles and responsibilities: Further defining the roles and responsibilities of national contact points and competent authorities.
- Expanding the list of offences: Including additional offences such as failure to respect vehicle access restrictions, violations at railway level-crossings, failure to give way to emergency service vehicles, and hit-and-run incidents. These are in addition to offences proposed by the Commission, such as crossing a solid line, dangerous overtaking, dangerous parking, wrong-way driving, and use of overloaded vehicles.
- Enhancing data access procedures: Clarifying procedures for accessing vehicle registration data and options for competent authorities to request mutual assistance. This ensures that the concerned person is identified promptly, traffic offence notices are delivered to the correct address in a reasonable timeframe, and sanctions are enforced.
- Safeguarding fundamental rights: Implementing measures to protect the fundamental rights of drivers and other concerned persons, including preventing abuse by private entities involved in the process and enhancing personal data protection mechanisms.
Following the adoption of the new legislation, the legislative act will be signed by the presidents of the Council and the European Parliament. It will then be published in the EU’s Official Journal in the coming weeks. The revised directive will come into force 20 days after publication. Member states will have 30 months to transpose the provisions of the revised directive into their national legislation.