The European Commission unveils its road circulation regulation proposal

The CEA’s Senior Technical Consultant, Dale Camsell, kicks off his report with news of the progress of the road circulation regulation – an initiative pressed for by industry bodies over the last two decades.

Whilst most of the EU regulations that machine manufacturers need to comply with are harmonised across the EU Single Market, the rules governing the requirements for allowing mobile machinery to circulate on public roads vary from country to country. This lack of a common set of requirements for road circulation causes complexity issues for OEMs – as the build specification for roadable machines will depend on which country they are sold into. It also causes a logistical challenge for machine owners seeking to operate across country borders, as they may fall foul of differing national legislation that effectively prohibits machines from operating cross border.

Industry has long campaigned for a unified set of requirements to apply right across the single market. In more recent times, mobile machine manufacturers have worked collaboratively to create a draft proposal that the European Commission could use as the basis for developing the necessary legislation. The multi-sector joint group of manufacturers submitted its proposal some four years ago. Since then, the European Commission has been working with stakeholders and member states to develop its legislative proposal. Through the

Committee for European Construction Equipment (CECE), members of the CEA’s General Technical Committee (GTC) played a full role in developing the original industry proposal.

On 30th March 2023, a welcome milestone was reached when the European Commission published its proposal for the regulation. As expected, it is based on a type approval approach and, whilst being similar in many ways to the tractor type approval regulation, it offers a so-called simplified type approval process. This means that for aspects of the machine that are more critical for road safety, the conformity assessment of the machine will require the involvement of a third-party, independent authorised body. For aspects of the machine that are less critical for road safety, the conformity assessment will be based on reports or self-certification by the manufacturer.

For general safety aspects that relate mainly to the functional operation of the machine, regulators will rely on existing safety regulations (such as the Machinery Directive) to lay down the safety requirements. Only those safety aspects of the machine that the regulators deem to have criticality in relation to road circulation will require third-party involvement. However, details of the technical requirements and their criticality status are not yet included in the draft regulation by the Commission. These will follow at a later stage in the form of delegated regulations. The Commission’s plan is for the delegated regulations to be developed in the two years or so following the entry into force of the necessary framework regulation.

There are several items of high relevance for OEMs in the framework regulation. These include the fact that the scope is limited only to self-propelled equipment, hence towed equipment is not included in the scope despite industry’s requests. For example, manufacturers of towed equipment, such as crushers or screeners, will therefore have to continue to rely on current arrangements. The Commission’s proposal also limits its scope to machinery that has a maximum design speed of 40 kph. Machinery that is capable of exceeding this threshold will not be able to use this legislation to gain an EU type approval and must also rely on existing national schemes. The final notable exclusion is machinery that is classified as “small series”, which comprises quantities not exceeding 50 units per machine type put on the market per year and per member state.

The next steps in the development of the regulation will be stakeholder consultations - both public and targeted. CECE is currently preparing its consultation response, centring on seeking more legal certainty where elements of the proposal seem vague and open to interpretation. CECE will also contribute to the targeted consultation, where the European Commission’s consultant will probe deeper into how construction equipment manufacturers view the proposal, and hear any counter-proposals.

In the coming months we will get a clearer idea of the timing for the framework regulation. Important too will be determining the scope of the requirements and timing of the delegated regulations. CEA members will be kept abreast of developments and their implications through our highly active GTC.

Finally, CEA members can rest assured that CEA is well positioned in advocacy actions related to the road circulation regulation. Alessandro Rossi (Caterpillar) chairs the CECE project team that is dealing with this matter, so CEA is at the heart of representing construction equipment manufacturers to the European Commission in this vital matter.

And other items on the EU regulatory agenda....

There are a number of EU regulatory developments that could have a significant impact on construction equipment manufacturers. These include aspects of the new EU Machinery Regulation, which will replace the current EU Machinery Directive, the Artificial Intelligence Regulation, which is an accompanying piece of legislation that compliments the Machinery Regulation, the Cyber Resilience Act, which complements the Machinery Regulation, and the Data Act, which deals with responsibilities and obligations of the holders of data. Detailed updates of the consequences that these regulations will have on our industry are now a key part of the CEA’s GTC agenda – and will be reported in future issues of Construction Worx.

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