Technical roadside inspection of the roadworthiness of commercial vehicles circulating in the Community

The Commission presented a report on the application by Member States of Directive 2000/30/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the technical roadside inspection of roadworthiness of commercial vehicles circulating in the Community (2013-2014).

Under Directive 2000/30/EC, commercial vehicles and their trailers circulating on the territory of a Member State shall be subject to technical roadside inspections of their roadworthiness in order to improve road and protect the environment. The Directive lists nine points which may be subject to roadside inspections. Failure to comply with one of the requirements may result in the use of the vehicle being prohibited.

Directive 2014/47/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council revised the rules and procedures for the roadside inspection of commercial vehicles. It will have to be applied by the Member States as from 20 May 2018.

Data communicated: every Member State that has fulfilled its obligation made use of the template attached to the Commission’s information letter and submitted the data in an electronic version. The data, however, were not always communicated in a timely manner. For some of them, the report was only transmitted following dialogues between the Commission and the authorities of the Member States concerned. The dialogues with France and Germany revealed that these Member States were not in a position to provide the required data.

The main conclusions of the report are as follows:

Vehicles checked: for the period 2013-2014, there were 2 561 820 fewer inspections compared to the previous period, a decrease of 31.5%. The Commission explained this reduction by more efficiently targeting potentially defective vehicles or by reducing the resources available in the Member States to carry out roadside checks.

A remarkable change has been observed in the data reported by Finland which does not include vehicle checks registered outside the EU. The percentage of Polish vehicles checked decreased from 92.1% to 47.3%, which shows that Poland is placing greater emphasis on checking foreign vehicles. In Belgium and in Luxembourg, domestic vehicles were inspected in fewer than 40% of cases whereas in other transit Member States the proportion is more balanced.

The Commission considered that further efforts should be made to achieve a more balanced rate of inspections.

Prohibited vehicles: according to the information sent by Member States, the proportion of vehicles prohibited in relation to all vehicles checked varies considerably from one Member State to another, from a high of 90.1% in Estonia to just 0.2% in the Czech Republic and even 0% in Portugal.

In Estonia, the percentage of prohibitions of domestic vehicles is 90.1% compared with 45% for vehicles from other Member States. The same rates in Sweden are 82.3% to 39.6%, 48.7% to 13.6% in Malta and 44.6% and 26.1% respectively in Italy.

The figures seem to indicate that Austria target poorly maintained vehicles more successfully which increases operational effectiveness and decreases administrative burden.

As of 2018 the new roadside inspection Directive 2014/47/EU requires Member States to adjust their inspection systems, moving from carrying out purely random checking to a more targeted approach.

Types of deficiencies: the most frequent deficiencies detected during inspections concern the roadworthiness condition of:

·         lighting equipment and electric system (20.9%);

·         axles, wheels, tyres, suspension (20.6%);

·         braking equipment (18.8%); other equipment including tachograph and speed limitation device (17.4%).

Within the different items to be tested, considerable differences in deficiency rates were reported.

As regards the vehicles per category, heavy trucks (category N3) were prohibited most often, in 13.6% of the inspections in total. Trailers belonging to the category O3 were found to have a defect in the smallest proportion (6.8%).

The total number of prohibitions per Member State show that Swedish (80.9%) and Finnish (53.2%) vehicles were most often found with serious defects, while Greek (2. 2%) and Latvian (2.8%) only rarely.

The Commission encouraged Member States to pay particular attention to the categories of deficiencies that continue to be most problematic and to adjust the inspection methods they use accordingly.