(1)

Pursuant to Article 1(11) of Directive (EU) 2020/1057, road transport operators may be required to send to the competent authorities of a Member State to which a driver is or has been posted a posting declaration or other documents, using a multilingual standard form of the public interface connected to the Internal Market Information System (‘IMI’), established by Article 2 of Regulation (EU) No 1024/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council (2).

(2)

Access to the public interface connected to IMI should be done via the creation of a secure account allowing authorised users to manage the posting declarations and document requests made by the competent authorities of a Member State. Authorised users should be able to record the details regarding the operator, the transport manager and posted drivers. An authorised user is a person acting on behalf of the operator to manage posting declarations and reply to requests for documents from the host Member State.

(3)

Posting declarations should be submitted in the public interface for a maximum of 6 months.

(4)

In order to comply with Article 1(12) of Directive (EU) 2020/1057 and keep the posting declarations up to date, it should be possible to amend the information in the posting declaration.

(5)

It should be also easy to renew the declaration, in order to avoid an excessive administrative burden on operators.

(6)

To allow the operators to comply with the obligation set out in Article 1(11)(b)(i) of Directive (EU) 2020/1057 the public interface connected to IMI should make the declaration available in paper and electronic form.

(7)

In case of the failure of the operator to provide documents pursuant to Article 1(11), point (c), the operator should be able to see in the public interface connected to IMI when such documents have been provided by the Member State of establishment following a request for assistance by the host Member State in IMI.

(8)

The public interface connected to IMI should also allow for one or more national authorities to receive, in IMI, posting declarations and the documents sent at their request by operators.

(9)

In order to ensure efficient enforcement of the specific rules on the posting of drivers and to avoid excessive administrative burden, it is important that the national competent authorities within the host Member State coordinate so that operators do not receive unnecessary requests in the public interface connected to IMI from that Member State covering the same posting period.

(10)

In order for national authorities to check compliance with posting rules, it is crucial that the national competent authorities have access to the driver’s tachographs record sheets that provide for the country codes of the Member States crossed by the driver.

(11)

Given that operators are only required to keep tachograph records sheets, printouts and downloaded data in a legible form for at least 1 year after their use, the public interface connected to IMI should allow the operator to respond to requests for documents from the competent authorities of the Member State where the posting took place for a period covering up to the preceding 12 months from the date of the request, as in accordance with Article 10(5) of Regulation (EC) No 561/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council (3).

(12)

In order to allow operators to gather all necessary documents within 8 weeks, the operator should be able to provide the requested documents in one or more stages.

(13)

The operator should be informed via the public interface connected to IMI in cases where the host Member State asks for the assistance of the Member State of establishment.

(14)

To avoid that requests for documents remain open for an indefinite duration, the competent authority of the host Member State should close them upon completion of the assessment of compliance of the operator with the posting rules and inform the operator of the result of the request. In cases where the competent authorities of the host Member State do not close the request for documents, it should be automatically closed after a period of 24 months.

(15)

Given the sensitive character of the personal data shared through the public interface connected to IMI, it is necessary to allow for the deletion of all data stored in that interface and the operators’ accounts when that data is no longer needed for checking compliance with the rules on posting drivers in the road transport sector. An obligation for automatic deletion should also apply to the documents submitted by the operator via the public interface connected to IMI following requests for documents from the competent authorities.

(16)

Where it is necessary for the purposes of this Regulation to process personal data, this should be carried out in accordance with Union law on the protection of personal data. Any processing of personal data based on this Regulation is subject to Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council (4).

(17)

The European Data Protection Supervisor was consulted in accordance with Article 42(1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, and delivered an opinion on 7 July 2021.

(18)

The measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the Committee referred to in Article 4(1) of Directive (EU) 2020/1057.