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EU sticks to August smart-card deadline
Page 8
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NI by Emma Penny
The EU is set to insist that its 5 August 2004 deadline for fitting smart-card digital tachographs is met, despite calls for the legislation to be delayed.
The view that smart cards will be adopted by the EU deadline was confirmed last week by government transport secretary David Jamieson. "I know there have been discussions about digital smart-card tachographs, but we don't want to slow that the introduction of smart-card tachos] down in the hope of new technology further down the line."
Jamieson's statement comes after the Freight Transport Association wrote to his colleague John Speller asking him to use the govern merles influence to bring an end to the progress of the current EU regulation" (CM 20-26 Feb).
The main stumbling block facing smart-card tachos is that manufacturers have not been able to meet the EC's initial 5 March deadline for submitting systems for approval. As well as technical glitches, James Fiockham, policy director at the FA, says he's still very worried about introducing smart-card tachos because of the increasingly limited time for operators to adjust to the new technology. 'There's a very, very restrictive legislative timetable for its introduction, but there are very few options for legally scrapping it," says Hookham.
He adds there is a procedure the European Commission could go through to stop the legislation, but it would "-take a high amount of commitment and political will", which he thinks is unlikely.
However, he believes the EC's inability to change legislation because the process of change is too difficult is a "serious indictment of its flexibility"