Factual summary report on the public consultation on “Revision of the Directive on Driving Licences” – 25 February 2022 - 20 May 2022

Disclaimer: the views presented in this factual summary report are not the views of the European Commission but of the stakeholders that participated in this public consultation. It cannot in any circumstances be regarded as the official position of the Commission or its services.

1.INTRODUCTION

The open public consultation on the revision of the Directive on Driving Licences ran between 25 February and 20 May 2022.

The Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy, adopted on 9 December 2020, confirms the full commitment of the Commission to deliver on the ambitious goals on road safety for the Union established in the policy framework of 2018. The revision of the Directive on driving licences is included in its action plan as one of the key actions in this area.

The primary objective of the new initiative will be to improve road safety in the European Union, with a set of measures that will, among others, develop risk awareness and improve the behaviour of drivers who have committed road safety offenses. The initiative will also aim to contribute to improving the free movement of people, in particular building on technological innovation to introduce digital driving licences. Finally, the actions taken in the frame of the initiative will also aim at contributing to the reduction of gas emissions.

The consultation activities have the following two main goals:

-to provide the concerned stakeholders and the wider public an opportunity to express their views and opinions regarding the key elements of the initiative and the impact assessment.

-to gather specialised inputs (i.e. data and factual information, expert views) from key stakeholders, in particular on the various problems, policy measures and options considered under the initiative, as well as their expected impact.

The public consultation took the form of an online survey with open and closed questions. The questionnaire was published in 24 official EU languages, and participants could reply in any of those languages.

The statistics computed in this summary are based only on contributions to the public consultation submitted through the online questionnaire. The input has been analysed using a data analysis tool 1 complemented by manual analysis.

In addition to the replies provided through the questionnaire, 58 additional written inputs including position papers were submitted.

2.PROFILE OF RESPONDENTS TO THE ONLINE QUESTIONNAIRE

This public consultations received 7538 replies: 7025 from EU citizens, 157 from non-EU citizens, 125 from company/business organisations, 54 from business associations, 33 from public authorities, 32 from non-governmental organisations (NGOs), 14 from consumer organisations, 3 from trade unions, 2 from an academic or research institution, 1 from an environmental organisation. See figure 1 for details.

Figure 1: Profile of the respondents

As regards the organisation size, 7182 respondents chose not to answer, most of them being citizens. 142 respondents are micro-organisations, while the second most represented category is large organisations (81), followed by small organisations (65) and medium organisations (64). As regards the scope of the organisations, among those who chose to indicate their scope, 18 respondents have a national scope, followed by a local one (6), and international one (5), and, finally by a regional scope (4).

In terms of country of origin, the non-EU countries which are most represented in the survey are Switzerland (142), United Kingdom (9), Kazakhstan (4) and Norway (3). Among EU countries, the most represented ones are Germany (3438), followed by France (1731), Austria (860), Belgium (372) and Denmark (224). The least represented EU countries are Lithuania (2), Cyprus (2), Croatia (2) and Bulgaria (2). See figure 2 for further details.

Figure 2: Country of origin

Looking at languages in which replies were submitted, the two most represented languages are German (4513) and French (1973). 273 respondents chose to submit their replies in Dutch, 226 in Danish, 121 in English. The least used languages are Latvian (1), Bulgarian (1), Maltese (2) and Croatian (2). See figure 3 for details.

Figure 3: Language of contributions

As regards the age category, 3452 respondents are aged between 50 and 70, 2985 are aged between 25 and 50, 459 are above 70, 201 between 18 and 25, and 5 respondents are below 18. See figure 4 for details.

Figure 4: Age category

Data related to the types of vehicles of interest reveal that the majority of respondents has a higher interest in cars (5658). This value is followed by interest in motorcycles (2192), in trucks (1774) and in buses (471). Details are shown in figure 5.

Figure 5: Type(s) of vehicles of interest

Regarding the gender, the majority of respondents indicated to identify themselves as males (6096), while 890 respondents identify themselves as female, and 442 decided not to reply and 100 prefer not to indicate their gender. Data are presented in figure 6 below.

Figure 6: Gender

Finally, most respondents (6626) are not professional drivers, 447 are, and 461 chose not to answer, as shown in figure 7.

Figure 7: Are you a professional driver?

3.CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ONLINE QUESTIONNAIRE

The summary of the contributions to the online questionnaire is structured around four points: problems, objectives, potential measures and impacts.

a.Problems

Question 1 aimed to assess the overall level of adequacy of current EU rules on driving licences to meet the EU targets on road safety. For this purpose, the four measures outlined in the chart below were considered.

Figure 8: Question 1 – In your opinion, to what extent are the current EU rules on driving licences adequate to meet the EU targets on road safety?

Question 2 inquired the adequacy of current EU rules on driving licenses to facilitate the free movement of people. The measures assessed are outlined in figure 9.

Figure 9: Question 2 – In your opinion, to what extent are the current EU rules on driving licences adequate to facilitate the free movement of people?

The goal of Question 3 was to find out the relevance of current EU rules on driving licences for the objective to become climate neutral by 2050. Respondents were asked to evaluate the two measures described below.

Figure 10: Question 3 – In your opinion, to what extent are the current EU rules on driving licences adequate to facilitate the free movement of people?

b.Objectives

In Question 4, stakeholders were asked to rank the level of importance of a series of objectives for the revision of the Directive on driving licences. Details are shown in figure 11.

Figure 11: Question 4 – In your opinion, to what extent are the current EU rules on driving licences adequate to facilitate the free movement of people?

c.Potential measures

Question 5 inquired the extent to which it is important to improve a series of provisions of the Directive on driving licences in order to meet the EU targets on road safety and to remove unnecessary obstacles to the free movement. It concerns the following provisions:

The views on importance of including the provisions in question are presented in figure 12 below.

Figure 12: Question 5 – In your opinion, how important would it be to improve the following provisions of the Directive on driving licences in order to meet the EU targets on road safety and to remove unnecessary obstacles to the free movement?

Question 6 dealt with the scope of the Directive, and on the possibility to expand the latter to the domains of intervention outlined in the figure below.

Figure 13: Question 6 – In your opinion, how important would it be to improve the following provisions of the Directive on driving licences in order to meet the EU targets on road safety and to remove unnecessary obstacles to the free movement?

In Question 7, stakeholders were asked to rank how important it is to consider the measures outlined in the graph below for the revision of the Directive on driving licences.

Figure 14: Question 7 – In your opinion, how important would it be to improve the following provisions of the Directive on driving licences in order to meet the EU targets on road safety and to remove unnecessary obstacles to the free movement?

Question 8 inquired on the issue of mutually recognised driving disqualifications. Respondents were presented with the offenses outlined below, and asked if any of them, and which ones, should be mutually recognised in the EU. Details are shown in figure 15.

Figure 15: Question 8 – In your opinion, for which of the following offense(s) should driving disqualifications be mutually recognised in the EU?

Through Question 9, the survey aimed to collect ideas regarding the minimum excess above the speed limit that would trigger the mutual recognition of driving disqualification, in case the offense related to speeding was to be selected for mutual recognition. This was analysed in the areas outlined in figure 16 below.

Figure 16: Question 9 – In case “speeding” offence would be selected for mutual recognition, what should be the minimum excess above the speed limit triggering the mutual recognition of such driving disqualification?

Question 10 was meant to identify whether it would be beneficial to update licenced drivers’ skills and knowledge, especially related to new technologies, by means of new training or tests. While according to 4272 respondents, the mentioned updates should take place on a voluntary basis, 924 replied that they should be mandatory.

Figure 17: Question 10 – In your opinion, would it be beneficial to have licenced drivers’ skills and knowledge, in particular in relation to new technologies, updated by means of new training or tests?

Question 10a aimed at evaluating the advised frequency of refreshments of training referred to in question 10. According to 1347 respondents, updates of drivers’ skills and knowledge should take place at each renewal of the driving licence, while 1358 respondents consider that this should happen whenever a vehicle with certain features is bought. 513 responses suggested that updates should be done more frequently, and according to 1062 respondents, they should take place less frequently. Details on the answers are shown in figure 18.

Figure 18: Question 10a – How often should in your view such refreshment of training or test take place?

The objective of Question 10b was to find out what aspects related to new technologies should be prioritised by trainings and tests. 4381 respondents believe that technologies related to road safety need to be prioritised, while green technology should come first according to 2086 respondents. Results are shown in figure 19 below.

Figure 19: Question 10b – What aspects related to new technologies should be prioritised by such training or test?

d.Impacts

Question 11 inquired about the impacts on road safety of a series of potential measures outlined in the chart below.

Figure 20: Question 11 – In your opinion, what would be the impacts on road safety of the following potential measures?

Question 12 aimed to inquire about the possible introduction of new measures, and asked participants to what extent they agreed with the statements outlined in figure 21 below.

Figure 21: Question 12 – In your opinion, to what extent do you agree with the following statements on the possible introduction of the following measures?

The purpose of Question 13 was to find out whether a certain set of measures that stakeholders were presented with could contribute to positive environmental impacts. Details are shown in figure 22.

Figure 22: Question 13 – In your opinion, to what extent would the following measures contribute to positive environmental impacts?

(1)

The tool used is Doris Public Consultation Dashboard, an internal Commission tool for analysing and visualising replies to public consultations. It relies on open-source libraries using machine-learning techniques and allows for the automatic creation of charts for closed questions, the extraction of keywords and named entities from free-text answers as well as the filtering of replies, sentiment analysis and clustering.