The Council adopted a Directive on cross-border exchange of information on road safety offences on the basis of a text agreed with the European Parliament. The objective of this directive is to combat road traffic offences that considerably jeopardise road safety, by  facilitating cross-border exchange of information. The United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark, due to their special position under the Lisbon treaty with regard to policy cooperation, do not participate in this measure, but may decide to join in later.

The Directive on cross-border exchange of information on road safety offences has been adopted by the Council on the basis of a text agreed with the European Parliament in second reading. The European Parliament gave its green light to the Directive in July. The application of such Directive means that a member state in which an offence has been committed with a vehicle registered in another member state will be able to identify the holder of the vehicle and investigate who is personally liable for the offence, so that sanctions can be enforced. The directive covers the four traffic offences which cause the most road casualties in Europe, namely speeding, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, non-use of a seat belt and failing to stop at a red light.

The new Directive will help to ensure equal treatment of drivers irrespective of their country of residence. According to the Commission's impact assessment, which gives estimates for the year 2004, 30% of road deaths were caused by speeding, 25% by drink-driving, 17% by non-use of seat belts, and around 4% by failing to stop at a red traffic light. In other words, some 75% of all road deaths are caused by one (or more) of these four traffic offences. In addition, this impact assessment also clarifies that up to 5,000 lives could be saved every year by the application of such a measure.

Traffic offences are often not punished if they are committed with a vehicle which is registered in a member state other than the member state where the offence has been committed, in particular if the offences are automatically registered using road-side cameras without direct contact between the driver and the police. While non-residents represent around 5% of the road users in the EU countries for which such data are available, the proportion of non-resident drivers committing speeding offences is in the range of 2.5% to 30%. These figures suggest that non-resident drivers are relatively more involved in speeding offences than resident drivers.