27.10.2007   

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 256/44

1.1

The Committee welcomes the Commission's proposal for a directive on the inland transport of dangerous goods, whose strategic aim is to harmonise EU legislation on the inland transport of dangerous goods. It should lead to an improvement in safety in the inland transport of dangerous goods.

1.2

The proposal revises four existing directives and four Commission decisions on the transport of dangerous goods, merging them into one legislative act, and also extends the scope of the EU's provisions to include transport by inland waterways (alongside road and rail transport).

1.3

The Committee shares the Commission's opinion that one cannot conceive of ensuring the best possible safety conditions for the inland transport of dangerous goods unless all types of inland transport (road, rail and inland waterway) are covered by common, EU wide legislation.

1.4

The Committee agrees with the Commission's view that the harmonisation of the binding legislation on the inland transport of dangerous goods by road and rail, which will not require any fundamental changes to the current regulations, and which will also extend the scope of EU legislation to cover inland waterways, will greatly simplify both the legislation and administrative procedures for both government authorities and private business.

1.5

The incorporation of all land transport modes into one legal act and the inclusion of references to international agreements and treaties on the inland transport of dangerous goods in the directive's appendices only (which would not be included as part of the directive, as is currently the case) will mean a significant reduction in the volume of the EU's acquis.

1.6

The Committee believes that the legal form proposed for the new provisions, the directive, represents a good solution. Considering, however, the wide scope of the exemptions and derogations outlined for the Member States, the Committee calls on all Member States to cooperate as closely as possible with the Commission on this issue, to ensure that the harmonisation of legislation becomes a reality.

1.7

The Committee wishes to emphasise that, given the detailed nature of the provisions on the technical conditions for the transport of dangerous goods and indeed of the categories of goods themselves outlined in the proposal, it can only comment on issues of a more general nature.

1.8

The Committee welcomes the information from the Commission that the opinions of the Member States and stakeholders, such as industry associations representing businesses active in the transport of dangerous goods, had a significant impact on the contents of the proposal, and that all efforts were made to reach a common position during the consultation process.

1.9

The Committee notes with satisfaction that the Commission will continue to be supported by a special regulatory committee on the transport of dangerous goods, which will help during comitology procedures.

1.10

The Committee also notes with satisfaction that the participation of industry associations at the meetings of the regulatory committee allowed them to put across their views regularly during the proposal drafting process. Equally, the Committee notes that consultations were also held with EFTA states and that the European Parliament was kept up to date with all developments.

1.11

The Committee values the fact that consultations were also held with the Central Commission for Inland Shipping on the Rhine, especially given that the transport of dangerous goods on this river accounts for some 80 % of the transport of such goods in Europe.

1.12

The Committee also notes the Commission's information that external consultants conducted an evaluation of the above area of policy in the years 2004-05: Evaluation of the EU policy on the transport of dangerous goods since 1994 and that their evaluation confirmed the validity of the proposal as well as the fact that public consultations revealed that the overwhelming majority of respondents were in favour of the policy proposed by the Commission.

1.13

The Committee believes that, since the translation and publication of the technical appendices is to be carried out at Member State level, it would be highly desirable for the Commission to financially support the translation process in the Member States.

1.14

Further to the above, the Commission is convinced that it is right to back the proposal in question, which was drawn up by highly qualified specialists in the inland transport of dangerous goods from a variety of Member States.

1.15

The Committee would, nonetheless, wish to draw attention to a number of issues which, in its opinion, still need to be reworked or clarified: there is no definition of the concept of dangerous goods under the Directive; Member States are granted the right to enforce bans on the transport of dangerous goods on their territory for non-safety reasons only; there is a lack of any information in Appendices III.2 and III.3.

The Committee's comments on these issues were presented in the section on Specific Comments.

2.1

The inland transport of dangerous goods (chemicals, cleaning products, petrol, explosives, handheld weapon cartridges, aerosols, radioactive materials, pesticides etc) carries with it a substantial risk of accidents occurring. This applies to all modes of transport; road, rail and inland waterways. It poses a danger to the life and health of not only those persons directly involved in the transport of such goods, but also to many residents of both urban and rural areas.

2.2

Action has already been taken in the past to ensure that the transport of such goods takes place under the best possible conditions. Today, the international transport of dangerous goods is regulated by a series of international treaties and agreements, which are based on UN recommendations. In order to ensure the safe transport of dangerous goods and the free and multimodal flow of international transport services, the UN has drawn up and revised a document entitled Recommendations on the Transport of Dangerous Goods, Model Provisions.

2.3

The regulation of the transport of dangerous goods is an important issue not only due to the specific nature of the goods themselves, but also because of the large volume of goods concerned. Total transport of dangerous goods in the EU already stands at 110 billion tonne-kilometres per annum, which represents approximately 8 % of all goods transportation in the EU. Of this figure, road transport accounts for 58 %, rail transport 25 %, with inland waterways making up 17 %. A growing trend is discernible, with the exception of rail transport.

2.4

In Europe, the provisions of the international agreements were implemented in the inland transport sector via the following three instruments:

2.5

EU legislation on the inland transport of dangerous goods, however, covers only transport by road and rail. The existing legislation already guarantees high levels of safety in respect of these two modes of transport, along with the free provision of transport services and the free movement of transport modes across EU territory. The EU legislation in this area includes the following four items:

2.6

However, there are no regulations governing the transport of dangerous goods by inland waterway. Whilst it is true that two systems of regulations are in place for regulating transport on the Rhine and the Danube (ADN-R and ADN-D), they have a regional scope only. What is more, there are also national regulations which regulate domestic transport in the Member States. The lack of any legislation in this field is, among other things, due to the non-signing of the ADN. The Commission's 1997 proposal for a directive on the approximation of the laws of the Member States on the transport of dangerous goods by vessels on inland waterways was not adopted and was withdrawn in 2004.

2.7

However, the agreement on transport by inland waterway is currently at the ratification stage and is expected to come into effect by 2009 at the latest. Taking this into account, the Committee agrees with the Commission's assertion that it makes sense to introduce transport by inland waterway into EU legislation, if only for the sake of harmonisation. Equally, this represents an opportunity to update and standardise the existing legislation. In addition, one must not allow the development of two separate legal systems: one for international transport, the other for domestic transport. Yet another reason for revising the legislation is that the existing EU legislation on the transport of dangerous goods is already quite complex. The legislative acts for certain modes of transport contain a number of inconsistencies whilst other regulations are or will soon be obsolete. For example, two directives may currently be considered to be redundant following the incorporation of their provisions into ADR, RID and ADN. A technical problem also exists regarding the current structure of the existing directives; according to the treaties, full translations must be made of the extensive technical appendices once every two years, whenever an international agreement or treaty is amended. This has proven to be a highly difficult and expensive process.

2.8

According to the information presented by the Commission, if nothing is done regarding this matter, then the above problems will not only not disappear, but may actually get even worse. The current complex provisions will, in all probability, become yet more complicated as a result of the amendments made to the international treaties and agreement; obsolete regulations will be maintained, which will not only confuse users but will also increase the risk of violation of the binding regulations. Instead of becoming more user-friendly, EU regulations could actually become completely inaccessible. With increasing use of multimodal concepts, different rules for different transport modes will exacerbate the daily problems encountered in multimodal operations and increase costs unnecessarily. In inland waterway transport, different rules for international and national operations will hamper the development of this mode, which otherwise would be the preferable mode in many cases, as is borne out by the statistical data available.

2.9

This is the reason behind the proposal to adopt a new directive, which will revise the existing four directives and four Commission decisions on the transport of dangerous goods by road and rail by merging them into a single legislative act (all three transport modes will be covered by one legal act only) and broadening the scope of EU regulations to include transport by inland waterway as well.

2.10

The new directive will revoke existing Directives 94/55/EC and 96/49/EC, as amended, on the transport of dangerous goods, Directives 96/35/EC and 2000/18/EC on safety advisers for the transport of dangerous goods by road, rail or inland waterway, and Commission Decisions 2005/263/EC and 2005/180/EC, as amended, on national derogations from Directives 94/55/EC and 96/49/EC. It is worth adding at this point that the provisions of Directives 96/35/EC and 2000/18/EC are currently included in the appendices to Directives 94/55/EC and 96/49/EC, as a result of which the former have become redundant with regard to transport by road and by rail.

2.11

The proposal introduces the existing international transport regulations into EU legislation and extends the scope of application of international regulations to domestic transport. The proposal will therefore lead to a substantial simplification in EU legislation on the transport of dangerous goods even though this will also involve an expansion in the scope of the legislation.

2.12

The aim of the proposal is to shift the responsibility for the necessary translation and publication of the technical appendices to the directives from the EU, i.e. from the Commission, to the Member States. One of the main reasons for this is that the translations done at EU level have not always been of the highest quality, compelling Member States to do their own translations or to correct them. These appendices are revised every two years. Accordingly, the Commission should financially support translations completed at Member State level. The Commission, however, believes that the savings made by the EU in translation costs outweigh the importance of providing financial support to the Member States.

2.13

The proposal should create a system whereby references to international treaties and agreements on the transport of dangerous goods would be included in the appendices to the directive only, and not in the directive itself, as is currently the case. This is expected to lead to a reduction of as many as 2 000 pages in the size of the EU acquis on the subject.

2.14

This simplification in EU legislation should make it easier to transpose this legislation into national law. The harmonisation of regulations on the transport of dangerous goods would simplify and make the work of the law enforcement authorities, including the judiciary, more effective.

2.15

The simplification and harmonisation of the regulations would make administrative procedures easier for all those involved in the transport of dangerous goods, from forwarder to customer.

2.16

The harmonisation of the regulations would also simplify the documentation required for haulage and for vehicles, the training of those involved as well as the work of the safety advisers for the transport of dangerous goods.

2.17

The proposal forms part of the Commission's programme for the gradual revision and simplification of the EU acquis and of its legislative and work programme.

3.1

Firstly: in the proposal entitled Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the inland transport of dangerous goods the section on definitions provides detailed definitions of individual words or terms (e.g. ADR, RID, AND, vehicle, wagon, vessel) explaining their meaning for the purposes of the directive. However, no information is provided as to what we should understand by the concept of ‘dangerous goods’. Doubtless, this is no simple matter given the number of dangerous goods that already exist and the advances in technology, which continually add new items to the list of such goods. The Committee nonetheless believes that information should be provided on what should be understood by the term ‘dangerous goods’ in the context of this directive.

3.2

Secondly: the draft directive gives Member States the right to regulate or introduce bans on the transport of dangerous goods across their territory for reasons other than transport safety only. Whilst the Committee understands the reasons for which the Member States were granted the right to regulate or ban the transport of dangerous goods, it fails to comprehend the reasoning behind according the right to act ‘for reasons other than safety only’. The Committee believes that, in the context of this proposal, whose aim is to increase the safety of dangerous goods, the proposed wording means that Member States would not be able to ban the transport of dangerous goods on their territory for safety reasons, which would seem to be rather illogical. Moreover, the Committee is unclear about how it would be possible to ensure the coordination of such bans applying to cross-border transport should the Member States introduce different bans.

3.3

Thirdly: Points III.2 and III.3 of Appendix III (Inland transport) do not contain any information on any planned additional transitory provisions or additional national regulations. Accordingly, the Committee asks for more information as to whether it is indeed the case that no such provisions are planned or whether they are simply in the process of being drawn up.