Periodic roadworthiness tests and technical roadside inspection (Roadworthiness package)

The Committee on Transport and Tourism adopted the report by Jens GIESEKE (EPP, DE) on the proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Directive 2014/45/EU on periodic roadworthiness tests for motor vehicles and their trailers and Directive 2014/47/EU on the technical roadside inspection of the roadworthiness of commercial vehicles circulating in the Union.

The committee responsible recommended that the European Parliament's position adopted at first reading under the ordinary legislative procedure should amend the proposal as follows:

Combating odometer tampering

To tackle odometer fraud and tampering on the second-hand car market, Members support a new requirement for vehicle repair garages to record cars’ and vans’ odometer readings and for manufacturers to enter readings from connected vehicles into a national database. However, to avoid additional work for small and medium-sized companies, Members only want this requirement to kick in if the repair takes more than one hour. Member States should also require vehicle manufacturers to transmit the odometer readings of connected vehicles which they have produced every three months starting from the date of first registration of the vehicle.

Within three years of the directive entering into force, the European Commission must evaluate the quality, availability, and usefulness of the odometer data system. The Commission should create a multilingual EU website explaining how buyers can obtain a vehicle’s mileage history free of charge before purchasing a used car, including in cross-border sales within the EU.

Roadside inspections

The current rules provide for an EU-level target of 5% of buses and trucks checked via technical roadside inspections. Members agreed that the 5% should be a national target instead, and want roadside inspections to be extended to vans. Members also agreed that roadside inspections should also screen cars, motorcycles, vans, trucks and buses for their polluting emissions and require potentially high-emitting vehicles to undergo further technical inspections. EU countries could use the same system to tackle noise emissions.

New roadworthiness and EU temporary roadworthiness certificates

Member States should ensure that testing centres or, where relevant, the competent authorities, which have carried out a roadworthiness test on a vehicle issue a roadworthiness certificate or an EU temporary roadworthiness certificate, for that vehicle indicating at least the standardised elements of the corresponding harmonised Union codes as laid down in Annex II. Member States will ensure roadworthiness certificates are issued as electronic attestations of attributes to European Digital Identity Wallets.

Member States should ensure that roadworthiness and EU temporary roadworthiness certificates contain the information necessary for authentication and validation of those certificates. They should also inform the Commission of trusted issuers of roadworthiness and EU temporary roadworthiness certificates which they will keep up to date. The Commission will make a list of those issuers publicly available through a secure channel and in an electronically signed or sealed form suitable for automated processing.

Testing centres should communicate electronically to the competent authority of the Member State concerned, the information included in the roadworthiness and EU temporary roadworthiness certificates which they issue.

Deficiencies

In the case of minor deficiencies only, the test should be deemed to have been passed, the deficiencies will be rectified, and the vehicle should not be re-tested. The relevant information about these deficiencies should be provided to the inspector at the next periodic technical inspection to allow them to verify if they have been rectified.

Member States should lay down effective, proportionate dissuasive, and non-discriminatory penalties for any proven tampering or manipulation of a component of the vehicle relating to its emission control system, silencer, safety-related systems, or odometer, with the aim of reducing or misrepresenting the distance record of a vehicle.

Motorcycles

The report stressed that the testing of motorcycles with an engine capacity above 125 cm³ should be mandatory. Member States should set appropriate intervals as well as areas, items and appropriate methods of testing. As a result, the current possibility of an opt-out for motorcycles with an engine capacity above 125 cm3 is no longer appropriate, and periodic testing should be mandatory for such vehicles without exception due to the evidence showing that regular inspections of motorcycles are associated with significantly lower fatality rates.

Cooperation between Member States

Member States should provide access to data regarding the content of the certificates of conformity, the last roadworthiness or EU temporary roadworthiness certificates, any technical roadside inspection report, and the odometer history of the vehicle, stored in national databases, to the competent authorities of and testing centres authorised by other Member States.