Earlier this February, European Commission’s DG MOVE organised the workshop “Bringing together Bodies and National Access Point Operators”, during which the European ITS platform, EU-EIP, and TISA, membership association for Travel Information services worldwide, collaborated on a series of sessions to harmonise the Delegated Regulation No 2015/962, hence, the Declaration of Compliance for EU-wide real-time traffic information services. This Regulation requests Member States to manage a national access point for real-time traffic data and to carry out an assessment of compliance.
Member States may request road authorities, road operators, digital map producers and service providers to provide specific documents describing the type and quality of data and they handle. These parties shall submit a Declaration of Compliance with the requirements set out in Articles 3 to 10 of the Delegated Regulation.
But why a harmonised approach?
“Without a harmonised approach, Road Authorities, Road Operators, Digital Map Producers and Service Providers would face the risk that -if operating in more than one country- they would need to submit a Declaration of Compliance in different formats, in different languages, and under a variety of different rules”, said Teun Hendriks, Chair of the TISA Technical and Standardisation Committee.
Louis Hendriks, leader of the EU EIP activity ‘Harmonisation and monitoring SPA’ highlighted that this is a win-win situation, not only for the parties that should submit a Declaration of compliance, but also for the competent authorities of the Member States responsible for the assessment of compliance. “They could possibly be facing discussions with a whole range of Road Operators, Digital Map Producers and Service Providers that operate within their territory, and that might submit their own Declarations of Compliance in different languages and in a variety of formats. Adopting and promoting the use of the harmonised Declaration of Compliance will make life easier for all involved parties”.
The results, presented during the workshop, were the two following harmonised Declaration of Compliance forms:
- one for Road Authorities, Road Operators
- one for Digital Map Producers and Service Providers
The European Commission (DG MOVE) closely followed the development of the two harmonised Declarations of Compliance and viewed it as a welcome contribution to the harmonised deployment of the National Access Points.
An important contribution to the successful outcome of this harmonisation was provided by Johanna Tzanidaki, Innovation & Deployment Director at ERTICO – ITS Europe.
A technical version of this article is available here.
