21 December 2012

Big win on the Super MoT and Happy Christmas

Further to all the other deliberations in Europe over the Super MoT, the Transport Council of Ministers meeting yesterday confirmed that they wished all motorcycles to be excluded and that the Regulation be reclassified as a Directive, so that individual member states would have more room to implement what they chose.

From the PR:

"The Council agreed a general approach on a draft directive updating the common rules on periodic roadworthiness tests for motor vehicles. (…) (it) does not retain the Commission's proposal to extend periodic tests to motorcycles and light trailers and to increase the minimum frequency of checks for older cars and light commercial vehicles from every two years to every year throughout the Union. Member states, though, are free to impose stricter rules."

The UK will of course keep its MoT for bikes, but won't now be forced to separate the testing centre from the repair shop, or introduce all the other excessive ideas that the EU Commission had tabled.

This is a huge victory for our campaign and especially the work of all the FEMA member organisations who pulled together on this and worked to influence their national governments.

The EU Parliament may still argue on behalf of the Commission and the private interests who stood to gain so much from this, but it's doubtful.

I'd like to thank all of you who took the time to write to MEPs about this. It will be interesting to see how they respond in the new year, having originally said that they would press ahead because it was bound to increase safety, even though, as with the anti-tampering, there was no evidence to show that it would...

If you click the campaigns tab on the www.mag-uk.org website there are summaries of various other ongoing issues at year end.

On a different note, the DSA have released a wonderfully complicated non flow chart entitled "Routes to your licence" ahead of all the changes that will take place on January 19th.

Although its design is bad enough, the first page is actually a demonstration of the outgoing system, but without an obvious header to say so. They must have a department dedicated to confusion!

It's good to see they remain true to form.


Have a very Happy Christmas and apologies if I have missed an email from you during the year.

Paddy Tyson.

1 comment:

Trobairitz said...

Hooray for common sense prevailing.