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

The Commission presented the seventh 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 (2017-2018).

Legal vacuum

The report noted that Directive 2000/30/EC was repealed by Directive 2014/47/EU on 20 May 2018, however the first report based on Directive 2014/47/EU will only cover the years 2019-2020. This means that in the absence of transitional measures set out by Directive 2014/47/EU, Member States were encouraged to submit their report in line with the requirements of Directive 2000/30/EC also for the period between 20 May 2018 and 31 December 2018, in order to achieve the objective of Directive 2000/30/EC and Directive 2014/47/EU, which have not changed, although the inspections carried out and the data they collected had already been based on Directive 2014/47/EU.

This legal vacuum caused significant practical problems for the Member States and resulted in some cases in erroneous reports and conclusions should be drawn with caution. The deadline for Member States to submit their data to the Commission for this reporting period was 31 March 2019.

The first reporting obligation when this target will be scrutinised will be due by 31 March 2021 for the years 2019-2020 respectively.

The main findings of the present report are as follows:

Data communicated

All Member States made use of the pre-prepared template to submit their data electronically. However not all Member States met the deadline for submitting their data. It should be noted that during this period, no infringement proceedings were initiated against any Member State for not communicating the data to the Commission.

Inspections

Compared to 2015-2016, 1 048 863 fewer vehicles were inspected in the 2017-2018 reporting period, which is a decrease of 20.9%. According to the explanations provided by the Member States, it is the combined result of reduced resources, reorganisation, changes of the national legislation and application of the rules. In any event, sixteen Member States carried out fewer inspections with percentage reductions ranging from 1.2% in the case of Italy to a 93.3% reduction in the case of Greece. On the other hand, twelve member States recorded increases in the number of inspections carried out with percentage increases ranging from 1.8% in the case of Latvia to 429.4 % in the case of Luxembourg.

57.7% of inspections carried out during the reporting period were on vehicles registered in the Member State where the inspection took place, 34.1% were on vehicles registered in another Member State and 8.2% were on vehicles registered outside the EU.

The proportion of domestic vehicles out of the total number of vehicles checked also varies substantially. In Austria, Belgium, France, Luxembourg and marginally in Poland, where the proportion of checks on domestic vehicles is below 50%, efforts should be made to ensure a more balanced rate of checks, more in line with those in other Member States with significant transit traffic.

Prohibited vehicles

Compared to the previous period, 99 617 less vehicles were prohibited which is a decrease of 24.7%. Fourteen Member States recorded an increase in the number of prohibitions issued with increases ranging from 4.1% in the case of Austria to 3.203% in the case of Finland. On the other hand, fourteen Member States recorded decreases in the number of prohibitions issued ranging from 1.7% in the case of Germany to a 99% reduction in the case of Portugal.

In terms of the origin of vehicles prohibited, the overall prohibition rate for domestic vehicles was 8.1%; 7.6% for EU (excluding domestic) vehicles and 5.1% for vehicles registered outside the EU. This would indicate that, the standards are generally being universally applied for EU vehicles irrespective of the country of origin of the vehicle.

The average prohibition rate for EU registered vehicles across all Member States was 7.9%. Category N2 (or Heavy Goods Vehicles) were the vehicle type prohibited most often, i.e. a prohibition rate of 11.4%. Swedish and Maltese registered vehicles were prohibited more frequently with prohibition rates of 37.5% and 31.9% respectively. On the other hand, German and Luxembourgish vehicles were prohibited least often with prohibition rates of 1.7% and 2.6% respectively. The reasons for the differences in these prohibition rates are unknown to the Commission, so it has be assumed that it must be arising from the application of different inspection methods and categorisation of defects amongst the Member States.

Defects

The two most frequent types of deficiencies detected during inspections carried out during the reporting period related to the:

- ‘lighting equipment and electrical systems’ (26.4%);

- ‘axles, wheels tyres and suspension’ (16.5%);

- ‘other equipment including tachograph and speed limitation device’ (11.5%).

The report noted that checks for ‘nuissance including emisions and spillage of fuel and/or oil’have almost doubled from 3.3% in the 2015-2016 reporting period to 6.3% in the current one, indicating a positive sign towards vehicle environmental checks.