Parliament legal chief attacks car-safety plan

Date: 24/01/02

THE European Parliament's top in-house lawyer has attacked a controversial industry agreement to re-design cars to reduce pedestrian and cyclist deaths.

Gregorio Garzón Clariana, head of the Parliament's legal service, says the European Commission was wrong to by-pass the assembly by rejecting its 'repeated' calls for a legally binding directive that would force car companies to make safer products.

Instead, industry volunteered to make the changes in a bid to save some of approximately 9,000 lives lost on EU roads every year.

Their compromise foresees an initial round of design changes to be implemented from 2005. In a second phase, from 2012-1014, car firms promise their products will pass a set of stricter safety tests.

The Commission's enterprise chief, Erkki Liikanen, said the deal would yield safety benefits far earlier than a directive, which would need the approval of MEPs and member states before it would become law.

But in his report on the issue Clariana said it is 'difficult to see why' the Commission opted for a voluntary agreement 'given the issue of passenger safety is a matter that is subject to co-decision under the EU's Treaty'.

He added the 'interpretation, application, and eventual modification [of the voluntary agreement] would escape all effective Community control' and would enjoy 'none of the guarantees' of the EU's legal system.

MEPs and safety campaigners welcomed Clariana's report. British Liberal MEP Sarah Ludford MEP said there was no 'real assurance that the stricter tests for protection of pedestrians from death or injury from bonnets and bumpers would ever be implemented'.

The head of the European Parliament's legal service, Gregorio Garzón Clariana, has attacked a controversial industry agreement to re-design cars to reduce pedestrian and cyclist deaths.

http://ec.europa.eu/comm/transport/themes/land/english/lt_7_en.html http://ec.europa.eu/comm/transport/road/index_en.htm

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