On Wednesday 5 June, the Member States’ ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) approved the Council of the EU’s negotiating position (general approach) on the revised River Information Services Directive, with a view to its adoption by European Ministers at the Transport Council meeting in Luxembourg on Tuesday 18 June.
In its initial draft in January (see EUROPE 13338/4), the European Commission suggested extending the scope of the Directive to all inland waterways forming part of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). As a result, the Directive would become applicable to a number of Member States that have not implemented the Directive to date, because they are not directly linked to the waterways of other Member States.
In its position, the EU Council specified that the Directive would continue to apply to inland waterways and ports which are part of the TEN-T and which are directly linked to the inland waterways and ports of another Member State. However, the Directive can be applied on a voluntary basis to waterways that fall outside its scope.
The Commission had introduced a grievance mechanism, enabling users of services to report problems with their implementation. Most Member States felt that this handling mechanism was too prescriptive. Given the risk of increasing the administrative burden of such a provision, the Article was therefore deleted.
Similarly, the Member States did not support the Commission’s proposal to update Annex I, which defines the minimum data requirements for navigation and voyage planning, by means of a delegated act. Any change to this list could have significant financial consequences, according to the EU Council. Moreover, the need for such a simplified procedure is not really justified, given that in the 19 years since the original Directive was adopted, there has been no need to update this list.
The Member States have also added an Article on satellite positioning. For navigation services, it is recommended to use satellite positioning and navigation systems such as the navigation services provided by Galileo. The Article also includes the High Accuracy Service and Open Service Navigation Message Authentication and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS). For applications and services based on Earth observation data, the use of Copernicus data, information or services is recommended.
Finally, the transposition deadline proposed by the Commission, which was one year after the entry into force of the amending Directive, would be extended to three years.
Read the draft general approach: https://aeur.eu/f/cjw (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)