Preliminary assessment of the third payment request of Romania (2024)

traffic safety on public roads, in case the accident included victims or the Court ruled for the case to be classified, dismissed, postponed or the driver was convicted. In accordance with Article 98(4) of GEO 195/2002, the sanction classes are defined as follows: (i) class I refers to 2 or 3 fine points; (ii) class II refers to 4 to 5 fine points; (iii) class III refers to 6 to 8 fine points; (iv) class IV refers to 9 to 20 fine points, and (v) class V refers to 21 to 100 fine points, where one fine point represents 10% of the minimum national gross wage, as stated under Article 98(2) of the same Government Emergency Ordinance. GO 1/2022 was published in the Official Journal No. 89 on 28 January 2022 and entered into force on 31 January 2022, in accordance with Article 12(1) of Law 24/2000 on the rules of legislative technique for the drafting of legislative acts.

• - monitoring of road offences by automatic equipment (video cameras, sensors);

Law No. 383 of 29 December 2022 regarding some measures to improve the efficiency of road traffic monitoring was published in the Official Journal No. 1279 on 30 December 2022 (hereinafter referred to as Law 383/2022) and entered into force on 2 January 2023, in accordance with Article 12(1) of Law 24/2000 on the rules of legislative technique for the drafting of legislative acts. Its Article 1 establishes the Integrated Road Traffic Monitoring System on public roads in Romania (so-called ‘e-SIGUR’), which is complementary to the Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). Article 2 of the Law specifies that road traffic monitoring is performed by means of intelligent transport systems. Furthermore, paragraph (a) of Article 3(1) and Article 4(1) provide that e-SIGUR relies on technical and communications systems described in the Law as any equipment, including component elements of intelligent transport systems, which allows to automatically collect images, sounds, information on the speed of a vehicle, information on weather conditions or other relevant information for the purpose of road traffic monitoring. On page 2 of the statement of reasons of

Law 383/2022, a specific reference is made to video cameras and sensors as the type of equipment to be used for such monitoring purposes.

• - reduction of speed limits in specific areas or roads depending on accidents data/risk analysis and

best practices at EU level […]; Government Decision No. 682 of 25 May 2022 approving the National Road Safety Strategy (hereinafter referred to as GD 682/2022), published in the Official Journal No. 535bis on 31 May 2022 and entered into force on the same date, in accordance with Article 12(3) of Law 24/2000 on the rules of legislative technique for the drafting of legislative acts. GD 682/2022 introduced a specific objective, namely OS2, aiming to reduce speed limits in certain areas or roads based on data from risk analysis and best practices at EU level, introducing speed management and mandatory safety features, and revision of traffic rules, including with regard to priority for vulnerable users (page 18). This objective has corresponding actions within Annexes 1 (page 13) and 2 (pages 35 and 36) of the Strategy, as amended by Government Decision No. 144 of 22 February 2022, which refer to: i) the identification of road sectors where speed limits should be reduced and ii) implementing reduced speed limits, to eliminate the risk areas referred to as hotspots on the national road

network. Government Decision No. 144 of 22 February 2022 entered into force on 23 February 2023 with its publication in the Official Journal No. 157bis, in accordance with Article 12(3) of Law 24/2000 on the rules of legislative technique for the drafting of legislative acts. Within this framework and following the above-mentioned actions, the authorities produced Report No. 2707913 of 6 June 2022 (“Analysis of road traffic accidents”), which sets out the methodology, checks, and results, and identifies 171 national road accident hotspots per each county/highway. In particular, the Annex to Report No. 2707913 identified 75 of such hotspots for which speed limits were proposed to be lowered. Following the identification of the hotspots, Romania took actions to implement reduced speed limits. In this regard, the authorities provided additional reports issued by the national road administrator and the Traffic Police confirming the reduction of speed limits in several of the identified hotspots. Furthermore, in accordance with the Safe System approach, as reflected in the EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 - Next steps towards "Vision Zero",