As part of its Third Mobility Package (which is focused on ensuring clean, competitive and connected mobility), the Commission adopted “An EU strategy for mobility of the future” in May 2017. This strategy proposed “a comprehensive EU approach towards connected and automated mobility setting out a clear, forward looking and ambitious European agenda”, identifying “supporting actions for developing and deploying key technologies, services and infrastructure” and “ensuring that EU legal and policy frameworks are ready to support the deployment of safe connected and automated mobility, while simultaneously addressing societal and environmental concerns which will be decisive for public acceptance.”
In its public consultation on Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM), which is open for comment until 4 December, the Commission aims to identify the “main challenges linked to the deployment of connected and automated vehicles today”, with a particular focus on:
- cybersecurity threats and trust issues: with no sector-specific approach on cybersecurity, the Commission seeks to propose various measures to set up a framework for cybersecurity on CAM, including as part of the revised General Safety Regulation (currently going through the EU’s legislative process), more specifically to include rules currently being developed at international level;
- data governance aspects, privacy and data protection needs: the Commission’s CAM strategy suggested monitoring the current framework, governed by the GDPR and ePrivacy Directive (soon to be Regulation - also going through the legislative process) and the consultation seeks to identify a set of actions that the Commission could recommend to Member States to fully implement the principles in this framework as regards testing and pre-deployment to foster data access, sharing, processing and storing; and
- different aspects of technology needs for 5G large scale testing or pre-deployment: the Commission aims to identify whether Member States need guidance in relation to the spectrum band that could be used for large scale testing and experimentation, or early deployment.
In terms of industry input, the Commission has posed specific questions for specialised industry actors such as car manufacturers, connectivity providers, service providers and telecom providers, as well as ones aimed at the public, end-users and public authorities. The results of this consultation will feed into a policy Recommendation to the Member States and industry actors which is to be adopted by the end of 2018/ beginning of 2019. With the Commission’s mandate changing next year, it is likely that this policy Recommendation will feed into the consideration of whether any additional legislative action is required over the coming five years.
It is worth noting that the CAM strategy is developing in parallel to other EU level workstreams on automated vehicles including those led by the Commission’s GEAR 2030 high-level group and the C-Roads platform.
