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The Regulatory Scrutiny Board has approved the European Commission’s file for a legislation harmonising road circulation requirements for mobile machinery.
The Regulatory Scrutiny Board is an independent body within the Commission that advises the College of Commissioners. It provides central quality control and support for Commission impact assessments and evaluations at early stages of the legislative process. If the Board declined the file, the unit in charge would be forced to delay the process by 1 year, after which the file could be presented again.
With this approval, the European Commission has overtaken the final internal hurdle to proceed with drafting legislation for circulation on the road for mobile machinery, that is a European type approval for mobile machinery circulating on public roads in Europe. CEMA, together with other associations in the Industrial Task Force, has actively engaged to assist and support the European Commission as much as possible.
But the work is not done. The European Commission will launch a study, executed by a third party, to assess which requirements to retain for the future legislation, since there are still open points like scope, maximum speed or overlap with other legislation.
The agricultural machinery industry maintains the need for a legislation fit for purpose with lean administration and self-declarations, and that allows exceptional features. Farmers and contractors need the extra wide, extra heavy agricultural self-propelled machinery like harvesters, as already on the market, to remain competitive. These machinery should therefore also take advantage of being in scope of only one single legislation for the whole of the EU.