site.btaEU Parliament to Discuss Ending Impunity for Drivers with Violations outside Their Country of Residence

MEPs' Tuesday agenda includes discussing sanctions for serious offences on the road to be applied under similar standards across all EU Member States. The European Parliament will vote at first reading on an ordinary legislative procedure aimed at improving road safety and ending impunity for dangerous drivers who do not reside in the country that imposes the penalty. Petar Vitanov, a Bulgarian MEP of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats and rapporteur for the proposal, spoke with BTA about the bill.

Legislation

Vitanov told BTA that the directive is part of a package of three laws related to improving road safety, a problem that has been identified as very serious in Europe and especially in countries like Bulgaria and Romania where road accident rates are twice as high as the European average.

One of these laws concerns changes in the rules of issuing driving licences, the other - improving cooperation between countries in the field of serious road accidents. The third law looks at the matter of imposing driving disqualifications on non-resident drivers for serious offences. Under the current legal framework, even when a driver's conduct is extremely serious and should result in a driving disqualification, this can only happen if the driving infraction was committed in the Member State which issued the driving licence. Under current rules, driving disqualification cannot be enforced Union-wide, which leads to relative impunity among road traffic offenders. To prevent this, the proposed Directive aims to establish a system for applying certain driving disqualifications EU-wide when a Member State has imposed one.

What is the situation now?

Around 20% of the driving violations in a given EU Member State are committed by non-resident drivers, Vitanov said. They tend to remain unsanctioned, because there is no mechanism for information exchange between the driver's home country and the country where the violation took place. There are only bilateral agreements between some of the Member States.

The purpose of the bill is to establish a clear EU framework for an EU-wide driving disqualification.

The violations in question

The scope of this initiative covers those road traffic offences that most contribute to road traffic accidents and fatalities, namely: excessive speeding; drink-driving; driving under the influence of drugs and causing death or serious bodily injury as a result of any road safety related traffic offence.

Too many people evade their fines after committing a serious offence in another country, they go home and keep driving, Vitanov said.

Currently, there is no way to standardize the sanctions in the Member States, as this matter is a national competence, and each country decides what they should be.

Where does Bulgaria stand in the EU in terms of sanctions?

According to Vitanov, the problem in Bulgaria is complex. Part of it lies in the poor infrastructure, which fails to match that in the other Member States. Because the standard of living in Bulgaria is lower, Bulgarians drive older cars, 19.5 years old on average, while the average age of cars in Europe is 10 years. Older cars offer fewer safety features, the MEP pointed out. He said there is also the problem of corruption on the roads and lack of justice.

Vitanov said these factors contribute to Bulgaria's extremely high number of road accidents and road casualties, incommensurate with other European Member States.