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Student driver: First of all, two years of probationary period without night driving, with a speed limit of 110?
Photo: Thomas Barwick / Getty Images
Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) warns of a "massive encroachment on the freedom of citizens": Advances from the European Parliament for a stricter driving licence directive are "outrageous", said the minister of the "Augsburger Allgemeine". Germany will not agree to the proposals in this form," he said on Wednesday. Previously, for example, the "Bild" newspaper had smelled a "driver's license hammer". Politicians from several parties distanced themselves.
Nothing has yet been decided, opinions are being formed in Brussels and Strasbourg and proposals are circulating. The European Parliament's Transport Committee is not expected to discuss the issue until December, before a decision could be made next year. In March, the EU Commission made a proposal on how to revise the existing directive for EU-wide uniform rules on driving licences.
The goal is to reduce the number of traffic fatalities from 20,000 last year to zero by 2050. To this end, the Commission proposes, for example, to train more in the driving school to be considerate of people who are not in cars. A digital driver's license and cross-border checks on violations are also part of the package.
The latest excitement relates to a discussion paper published on Monday by the chair of the transport committee, Karima Delli. "Fake news," the French Green Party replied to the far-right politician Florian Philippot on the platform "X", formerly Twitter, according to which the driver's license reform would bring "hell".
The politician sums up what her proposed amendments really mean as follows:
a speed limit of 110 km/h only for novice drivers is not new at all, it already applies in France, Delli recommends what she considers to be a successful model throughout Europe; on the other hand, it rejects the Commission's proposal to lower the driving licence age to 16 with a technical restriction of 45 km/h;
it had by no means called for a ban on driving at night between midnight and six o'clock in the morning for novice drivers, it merely wanted to exempt the Member States from special rules for this accident-prone time;
the driver's license should also not have an expiration date, neither at the end of the two-year probationary period proposed by her, nor for older drivers. Rather, Delli suggests regular refresher courses and driving safety checks for everyone, as well as medical checks such as eye or hearing tests at ten-year intervals. This model, which has been tried and tested in Italy, is also brought into play by the EU Commission.
However, Delli also has something new in its program:
in particular, the proposal to restrict driving licence class B to vehicles up to 1.8 tonnes. Only people who have trained for the special dangers with a new class B+ and are at least 4 years old should get behind the wheel of heavier cars up to 25.21 tonnes – an extra driving licence for heavy SUVs, pick-ups or minibuses.
while the Commission provides for a zero-alcohol alcohol limit only as a special rule for novice drivers, Delli wants to leave it up to the Member States for all drivers. Zero tolerance for driving, she also wants for other drugs;
If they are ever adopted, the new rules will only apply to new driving licences – those who were previously allowed to drive SUVs will retain this right in any case.
Delli received praise from the European Road Safety Council (ETSC). The panel referred to a new study from Belgium: The rapidly increasing weight of modern cars means growing danger to the lives of pedestrians, cyclists and also the occupants of lighter cars.
The ETSC also welcomed stricter rules for novice drivers. 40 percent of accidents involve young people, who make up only eight percent of Europeans with a driver's license. "It is perfectly reasonable to introduce tiered driving licences," said ETSC policy chief Ellen Townsend.
German Greens at a distance
In German politics, however, this is seen quite differently, an even more sensitive issue than the young drivers are the old ones: In contrast to accident researchers, the Ministry of Transport sees no problem because people become less fit to drive in the course of their lives – for example due to dementia. "We have no significant accident figures among older drivers and therefore no reason for a general suspicion," Wissing told the Augsburger Allgemeine. In the accident statistics, older people actually appear less frequently than their share of the population would correspond to – but measured by their share of driving, they are more common, especially as the main culprits. The driver's license is about "social participation," Wissing ticked off the topic.
Jens Gieseke, a member of the European Parliament for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), called the proposals "a single programme of prohibitions against individual mobility". The FDP and SPD also criticized Delli, as did their German party friends: "We as German Greens have expressed strong concerns from a German point of view from the beginning," said transport politician Anna Deparnay-Grunenberg. It is problematic to try to remedy deficiencies in safety standards and climate policy via the Driving Licence Directive.
A spokesman for the Greens made it clear on Wednesday evening: "The ideas mentioned do not reflect the position of the German Greens, nor of the German Greens in the European Parliament." The fear of being accused of abusing the driver's licenses of Germans seems to weigh heavily.
Karima Delli herself is preparing for tough discussions, especially with national governments. She considers a model that could reduce the number of accidents by 15 to 20 percent to be particularly controversial: a points system that can lead to the loss of a driver's license through frequent violations. In Germany, this is already known, as a driving aptitude register at the Federal Motor Transport Authority. The Flensburg points would therefore be a model for a new strictness in Europe.
ahh/AFP/dpa