The EU Council of Ministers has deferred a decision on the Third Driving Licence Directive, but warns that the threat still remains. The British Motorcyclists Federation has welcomed the news. The BMF has campaigned against the Directive, which is designed to ‘improve the free movement of EU citizens by ensuring and facilitating mutual recognition of all licences. Reducing the possibilities for fraud and increase road safety’. Regardless, it still includes substantial changes to the existing UK motorcycle driving licencing laws.
Alistair Darling, the UK Secretary of State for Transport presiding over the EU Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council meeting on Monday, cited the fact that several Member States had reservations. These states including Germany, Austria, France, Poland and Denmark, were not particularly comfortable over the implications of the exchange of their old national licences for the new ones. It was finally decided that the dossier would be left to the Austrian Presidency starting 1st January 2006, Because these issues couldn’t readily be resolved at the meeting.
Commenting on this, the BMF’s Senior Government Relations Executive Trevor Magner said: “We’re pleased that the Directive wasn’t agreed, but it should not be regarded as any more than a stay of execution. The UK Government as EU Presidency did the right thing for the wrong reasons; licence exchange is only an administrative matter, our beef is with the unjustified and unnecessarily complex motorcycle testing and licencing proposals."
Commenting further he said: “Our campaign has been based on the fact that the new licencing regime will decimate the future of motorcycling. We hope this had some effect because the directive cannot now proceed to a second reading until a Common Position is achieved and this decision buys us valuable time.” Warning on the continuing threat, the BMF say that it will maintain pressure on the UK Government, now as an ordinary Member State, to negotiate deletion of the motorcycling provisions from the directive until they can be properly debated.
This is a highly complex issue say the BMF but extremely important to the future of UK motorcycling and are asking all motorcyclists to play their part by writing to their MPs and MEPs. A draft letter and details of their MPs and MEPs will be available on the BMF’s website.
Related Linkswww.bmf.co.uk
