Safety on the road moves ahead as EU ministers reach deal

Safety on the road moves ahead as EU ministers reach deal

IRU — 2025-12-05

News from Brussels

IRU welcomes the Council’s balanced general approach on the roadworthiness package. It aims to align inspections with technological developments, improve road safety, and promote cross-border cooperation and digitalisation in road inspections. However, important improvements are still necessary.

EU transport ministers have adopted the Council’s general approach on the roadworthiness package, marking another key milestone under the Danish Presidency.

The agreement updates EU rules for vehicle inspections by integrating emerging technologies into periodic roadworthiness tests and technical roadside inspections, advancing digital documentation, strengthening cross-border data exchange, and modernising rules on vehicle registration data and documents.

IRU EU Director Raluca Marian said, “The Council’s general approach strikes a pragmatic balance between ambition and feasibility. It avoids unnecessary testing burdens for light commercial vehicles, scales back the list of new electronic safety items, and rightly keeps remote sensing voluntary.”

“Cargo-securing checks will also remain limited to visual inspections, reflecting operational realities. However, several important elements are still missing and need to be addressed in the next phase,” she added.

The agreement reflects broad Member State support for modernisation and harmonisation while acknowledging concerns around administrative burden, feasibility of new testing methods, and costs for vehicle owners and authorities.

However, IRU underlines that further improvements are essential, in particular:

1. For periodic roadworthiness tests (PTIs)

• Zero-emission N1 vehicles are still constrained by outdated weight limits. Their classification should be adjusted to 4.25 tonnes instead of the current 3.5 tonnes, ensuring they are not subjected to heavier-vehicle PTI requirements.
• Procedures for rectifying dangerous deficiencies need greater clarity and flexibility, including allowing follow-up inspections, either in the Member State issuing the suspension or in the Member State of registration.
• A full 12-month validity should always be granted for any roadworthiness certificates issued after a temporary suspension for heavy-duty and passenger vehicles, starting from the day of issuance of the new certificate.
• The absence of an EU-wide approach to assess how a low-performing battery impacts road safety during PTIs is a major gap, given the importance of batteries for the safety and lifecycle performance of electric vehicles.

2. For technical roadside inspections (RSIs)

• Inspection targets remain quantity-based, rather than risk- or intelligence-led, risking inefficient enforcement and additional burden without delivering safety benefits.
• Roadside inspections remain too time-consuming, underlining the need for terminal-based checks for passenger transport, common control documents, and investment in safe, well-equipped RSI areas along the TEN-T network to minimise operational downtime.

3. For vehicle registration documents and data

• The level of harmonisation should be strengthened. The Council keeps only the minimum standardisation required by the directive, which may result in inconsistent certificate formats and data categories across Member States.
• For vehicles registered before the new vehicle registration directive applies, Member States may keep only the data they already hold. Aligning older vehicle records with the new data requirements is essential to avoid leaving pre-directive vehicles with incomplete or inconsistent records.
• A proper assessment of MOVE-HUB’s compatibility with existing systems, such as the Internal Market Information System (IMI) and the European Register of Road Transport Undertakings (ERRU), is needed to ensure full interoperability and avoid duplication or fragmentation of EU digital platforms.

IRU looks forward to working with the Parliament to refine these aspects and ensure a modern, proportionate and fully workable roadworthiness package for the EU’s mobility and logistics sector.