The European Commission adopted the first measure to ensure that by 2015 that the life-saving eCall system will be fitted to all new models of cars and light vehicles. The measure consisted in a Recommendation which urges Member States to ensure that mobile phone network operators upgrade their infrastructure so that eCalls are efficiently passed on to emergency services.

The Commission wants the life-saving eCall system to be fitted to all new models of cars and light vehicles from 2015. The Recommendation adopted on 8 of September urges every Member State to ensure that mobile operators treat calls from eCall devices like other 112 calls – i.e. give priority to them and do not charge for them. The Recommendation also indicates that Member States should ensure that mobile operators put in place systems to identify eCalls so that they can be routed to an emergency service call centre equipped to handle them. eCall automatically dials Europe's single emergency number 112 in the event of a serious accident and communicates the vehicle's location to the emergency services.

The Commission's aim is for a fully functional eCall service to be in place all over the European Union (as well as Croatia, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) by 2015. That's why this first step is a great news, according to what it was stated by Neelie Kroes, Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda, because it will ensure that millions of citizens will benefit from eCall, a system that can slash the time emergency services need to arrive at road accidents.

The Commission has planned as next step the adoption of specifications for the upgrade of emergency call response centres (under the Intelligent Transport Systems Directive – 2010/40/EC) and a proposal for a Regulation to require eCall devices meeting the required technical specifications to be fitted to all new models of passenger cars and light vehicles from 2015 in order to obtain EU-wide type approval.