MEPs have voted to introduce tougher road safety rules as the EU Parliament moves to ensure that drivers who are disqualified from driving in one EU country will be banned from driving across all EU Member States. 

The European Commission proposals were passed in the European Parliament on Tuesday of this week and aim to ensure that disqualifications for serious road safety offences—such as excessive speeding, drink-driving, driving under the influence of drugs, or causing death or serious injury—will result in mandatory EU-wide driving disqualifications. 

Currently, disqualifications don’t apply in a systematic or organised way outside the country where the offence was committed, meaning a driver could be disqualified for drink driving causing death in Poland on a Friday and be driving from Tralee to Tramore the following Tuesday.

Fianna Fail MEP, for Ireland South, Cynthia Ní Mhurchú  had raised concerns that there may be many drivers on our roads in Ireland today who may be disqualified in another EU member state for dangerous driving. Whilst she acknowledged getting specific figures in this regard is a difficult task, she said that closing this particular loophole is the right thing to do. 

The EU proposal introduces a system where the Member State issuing a disqualification will be obligated to inform all other Member States via a newly agreed RESPER system, ensuring consistent enforcement across the Union. Each Member State must then give effect to the disqualification within 15 days unless a valid exemption applies.

In Ireland, 9% of all penalty point offences are committed by motorists who are either unknown or hold a foreign driving licence. The European Commission has warned that in 2019 about 40 percent of cross-border offences were committed with relative impunity.

The Parliament also voted through new changes to EU driving licenses which include a provision for the use of new digital driving licences. This will let drivers carry an official version of their licence on their smartphones which will be a secure digital license that can will be acceptable to Gardaí or police in other EU countries.