Brussels, 12/12/2006 (Agence Europe) - On 12 December, the Transport Council managed to reach general guidelines on the proposal for a directive aimed at making it an obligation to have more effective rear-view mirrors on heavy goods vehicles already on Community roads. The Council, however, reduced the scope of the proposal. The Parliament has now to give its stance on this dossier at first reading.
Presented early October (see EUROPE 9278), the proposal aims to improve the indirect field of lateral vision on heavy vehicles of over 3.5 tonnes already in circulation on EU roads in order to better protect the more vulnerable road users (for example, cyclists). This proposal completes Directive 2003/97 which applies to new heavy vehicles. It was at the request of several Member States (mainly Spain, Sweden, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Cyprus), which evoked the costs that would be engendered by the basic proposal for the road sector, that the Council finally decided to reduce the scope of the directive for application to heavy vehicles registered as of 1 January 2000 (the initial proposal being 1 January 1998). The Council also decided that, after transposition of the directive, that is one year after its entry into effect, the sector will have two years in which to comply with the provisions set out in the text.
It was with regret that Susanna Huovinen, the Finnish Transport Minister who was also chairing the Council, agreed to amend her initial compromise. “It is not worth holding seminars as in Verona” on road safety if Member States are not willing to make the effort required, Jacques Barrot, Transport Commissioner, said for his part. The Commissioner nonetheless said that, even if the scope of the proposal is reduced, it would cover “85% of the fleet (of lorries) initially targeted”. Upon the insistence of several delegations, and that of the United Kingdom and Ireland in particular, Mr Barrot promised to conduct an overall cost/benefit analysis on the installation of mirrors in heavy vehicles to eliminate the frontal blind spot. (dt)