Strasbourg, 04/06/2003 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, the European Commission presented its European action programme for road safety 2003-2010, which ails to reduce the number killed on the roads by half by 2010. Loyola de Palacio, Commissioner for Transport thinks that this will involve raising awareness of all concerned parties about the tragic statistics: every year there are 40,000 killed and 1,700,000 injured on EU roads. This is why the Commission programme aims to take action on three areas: 1) encouraging users to behave better by ensuring stricter respect for existing legislation, harmonising sanctions at a European level, promoting continuous training for individual and professional drivers; 2) making vehicles safer by harmonising passive safety measures such as the obligation for providing safety belts; 3) improving road infrastructure. With this goal in mind, the Commission will be proposing a framework directive on the safety of road infrastructures, as well as a system for the harmonised management of black spots and auditing of road safety for toad on the trans-European network.. The Commission is going to call on all partners involved (transport companies, vehicle manufacturers, local and regional authorities) to register in the European Charter on Road Safety, which will call on signatories to make specific commitments on the subject, which will be made public.