European Union

The role of the EU in road safety

The EU has broad scope to act on road safety.

Article 71 of the EC Treaty allows the European Union to legislate to adopt measures to improve transport safety, within the limitations of subsidiarity. It has 'exclusive competence' in some areas, such as technical harmonization of vehicle standards, where it has to ensure a high level of protection (Article 95). It can set out safety requirements for the Trans European Road Network. It has established competence in several areas such as seat belt use in cars, periodic technical inspection of motor vehicles, tachograph legislation, weights and dimensions and aspects of driver training and licensing.
The European Union has financial means which enable it, through targeted calls for proposals, to support initiatives to generate a higher sense of awareness among policymakers, professionals and the public at large about the main safety issues and the solutions required. It can, for example, grant financial support to consumer information programmes such as the EuroNCAP programme.

The EU can encourage best practice and information exchange; prepare best practice guidelines; gather and analyse accident and injury data gathering and analysis and carry out research and development towards future solutions [2].

Recent actions:

In June 2003, the European Commission presented a European Road Safety Action Programme Halving the number of road accident victims in the European Union by 2010: A shared responsibility [8].

A European Road Safety Charter was established in 2004 to allow every stakeholder of road [19].