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Brussels – The European Commission (EC) has acknowledged the arguments of EU member states that for cars older than ten years, the technical inspection should take place once every two years and not every year. State Secretary of the Ministry of Transport of the Slovak Republic Denisa Žiláková said this in Brussels on Thursday after the meeting of the EU Council for Transport and Energy, reports the TASR correspondent.
Denisa Žiláková recalled that the ministers discussed several legislative proposals from the European Commission, and she considers the proposal to amend the regulation on the technical inspection of passenger vehicles to be the most important. According to her, this is good news for Slovakia as well, because the European Commission initially submitted a proposal for the technical inspection of this type of vehicle to be carried out every year.
“This did not fully suit the Slovak Republic and other member states, because it would mean a loss of time and would affect the wallets of Slovak citizens. Slovakia, through the Ministry of Transport, fought against this proposal and succeeded. There were, of course, several member states that were not satisfied with this proposal,” she described the situation.
On the table is a compromise proposal that technical inspections of vehicles older than 10 years should be once every two years
In practice, this means that there is a compromise proposal on the table for technical inspections to be carried out once every two years, as has been the case until now. The final wording of the revised regulation on technical inspections will be drawn up in trilogues, that is, negotiations between the EU Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament.
Žiláková welcomed the fact that a proposal for digital cross-border cooperation in this area has been created, which will speed up the exchange of information between member countries. She pointed out that Slovakia, like other countries, does not yet have such a digital system, and therefore welcomes the draft regulation that requires it to be created.
She specified that regarding technical inspections, the EU Council approved, for example, that a citizen of one member country who studies or lives in another EU member state can have the technical inspection of their vehicle carried out abroad. This type of inspection is valid for a period of six months. The third part of the amendment to the regulation on motor vehicles concerned, according to her, measures that prevent unauthorized interference with vehicles, which Slovaks know under the term “odometer rollback” on vehicles. Such practices are to be prevented by the amended EU regulation. (4 December)