DRIVING LICENCES (15820/03)
Letter from Stephen Ladyman MP, Minister
of State for Transport, Department for Transport to the Chairman
I am writing to update your Committee on the
progress of the above legislative proposal.
You may recollect that I wrote to you on 13
June 2005[23]
giving a comprehensive account of where matters then stood.
Since then, a Council common position was adopted
on 18 September 2006, and the European Parliament completed its
second reading on 14 December 2006, with no further amendments,
except to introduce the new "regulatory with scrutiny"
comitology procedure, giving the European Parliament a voice in
relation to any future amendments which may be proposed by the
European Commission to the Annexes of the Directive.
The measures become effective 20 days after
publication in the OJ, giving Member States until January 2011
to transpose the new measures into national law, and until January
2013 to bring them into effect. A particular exception is that
the obligation on Member States to withdraw all old-model driving
licences and replace them with the new model requires this to
be done by January 2033: however we think it likely that this
action will be taken much earlier by the UK in order to improve
and safeguard the security of the UK driver licensing system.
22 January 2007
Letter from the Chairman to Stephen Ladyman
MP
Thank you for your letter of 22 January 2007.
Sub-Committee B considered your letter at its meeting on 5 February.
We were grateful to you for providing us with
the final update on the Driving Licences Directive. We are pleased
that a resolution satisfactory to all parties has been reached.
7 February 2007
23 Correspondence with Ministers, 45th Report of Session
2005-06, HL Paper 243, pp 119-120. Back
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