Brussels, 04/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament is not expected to obstruct revision of the legal basis for the directive on the cross-border exchange of information on road safety infringements (2014/0218). On Monday 3 November (EUROPE 11073 and 1172) during an EP transport committee (TRAN), the rapporteur, Ayala Sender (S&D, Spain), expressed her intention to obtain an agreement on the subject by the end of the year.
This revision is due to the fact that the European Court of Justice invalidated the legal basis for “legal cooperation” under this directive last May and is recommending the adoption of a new legal basis for transport by May 2015. Application of this directive (in 20 member states) will not be suspended until this date and, in the meantime, the European Commission has already presented a revision of the directive in this connection (which makes the Danish, Irish and British opt out obsolete). The transport committee obtained an agreement on the subject at the beginning of October and Parliament would like to proceed rapidly in the same way. Sender summed up her intentions to the members of the TRAN committee by explaining that the new text on the table did indeed respect all the required conditions and she proposed continuing in this way, “if we manage to avoid introducing too many amendments, we should be able to obtain a text by the end of the year on which all the institutions will be able to agree”.
Her colleague, Peter van Dalen (ECR, the Netherlands), however, said that he was less optimistic and regretted having to play this, “little legal game” which was causing them to lose a lot of time. The initial Commission proposal recommended a legal basis for transport but was not supported by the co-legislators, which is why the Commission took the matter to the European Court of Justice. (MD)