Euro Contrôle Route in 2009: exchange programmes remain absolute priority.

The following article on the ECR exchange activities recently appeared on the Benelux website.

On 15 and 16 January 2009 at the Benelux General Secretariat an ECR experts working group met to plan the joint training of European road inspectors in 2009. 5 multilateral exchanges are on the programme, to be held in Poland, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands. Road inspectors from 20 countries will this year exchange their experiences and expertise with one another in the areas of fraud/manipulation with the digital tachograph and cabotage. New this year is that inspectors belonging to the middle-management of the control services will come into contact with their European colleagues via a training course in the Netherlands.

Along with multilateral exchanges, bilateral exchanges have been enjoying increasing success. During these exchanges, neighbouring countries train their road inspectors together on a theme which is important for these countries. This year Poland and Lithuania, Germany and France, Germany and the Netherlands, and France and Spain will be organising such exchanges.

In 2009 Euro Contrôle Route wishes - via the tactic of "shadowing", where inspectors closely follow their colleagues during the check weeks - to achieve a better information exchange concerning the results processing of possible violations. The ultimate goal is to arrive at better statistics and (ideally) uniform road checks throughout Europe.

Finally, ECR will be taking action against fraud with the digital tachograph, since this has a negative impact on traffic safety, social protection and equal competitiveness in the transport sector. For example, Euro Contrôle Route together with TISPOL (European Traffic Police Network) and with manufacturers of digital tachographs will organise two master classes on this theme, in which expertise and information on how to combat this type fraud will play a central role.

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