To improve road safety and working conditions for drivers providing occasional bus and coach services in Europe, the Council presidency and European Parliament’s negotiators reached a provisional agreement on the proposal for a revision of the 2006 rules on driving times and rest periods in the occasional passenger transport sector.

"We are proud to have achieved such a swift agreement with the Parliament on this important file. The new rules on minimum breaks and rests will ensure better working conditions for bus drivers and guarantee better services for tourist trips across Europe."
Georges Gilkinet, Belgian minister for mobility

Main objectives of the revised regulation

The revised legislation consists of targeted amendments to the 2006 regulation aiming to introduce a certain well-defined flexibility, by way of derogation and at the driver’s discretion, into the provisions on breaks and rest periods for professional drivers engaged in occasional passenger transport, such as tour buses.

The revised law therefore aims to better adapt this sector to its specific rhythm of work and to ensure a better service for passengers. However, it does not change in any way the maximum driving times or minimum rest periods for the professional drivers in question.

Key elements of the provisional agreement

The provisional agreement retains the main thrust of the Commission proposal. However, the co-legislators amended some aspects of the proposal, mainly related to the scope of specific rest rules, as follows:

• the flexibility in how to split the required minimum rest period of 45 minutes into two breaks spread over the 4.5 hours driving period
• the flexibility to postpone the daily rest period by 1 hour, provided that the total accumulated driving time for that day has not exceeded 7 hours, and that this option is exercised once during a journey with a duration of at least 6 days, or twice during a journey of at least 8 days
• the flexibility to postpone the weekly rest period for up to 12 consecutive days following a previous regular weekly rest period
• the last-mentioned option, already used in international services, could now be applied to domestic services as well

In addition to these, road safety standards are safeguarded and improved by the revised law through an enhanced control framework. A path towards user-friendly and control-facilitating digital forms was also agreed. More concretely:

• on control provisions, the provisional agreement provides that the required documentation for using the derogations is a single journey form on board, which will be replaced by a digital form after completion of a Commission study in this regard
• the documentation on board extends to previous trips during a certain period, for which copies need to be carried on board, in paper or electronic form
• moving towards digitalisation is further supported by the need to amend the tachograph specifications at the latest 18 months after the regulation enters into force, so that the type of passenger transport can be read from the machine and the requirement to carry documents for previous trips on board will be discontinued when the tachograph is in use
• the revised regulation clarifies that infringements to tachograph rules committed on another member state’s territory can be prosecuted in the member state of detection

Next steps

Following today’s provisional agreement, technical work will continue with a view to presenting a compromise text of the revised regulation to both institutions for approval in the coming weeks. From the Council side, the Belgian presidency intends to submit the text to member states’ representatives (Coreper) for endorsement as soon as possible. The text will then be submitted to a legal/linguistic review before being formally adopted by the co-legislators, published in the EU’s Official Journal, and entering into force.

Background information

During the adoption of ‘Mobility Package I’ in 2020, the European Commission committed to evaluating the appropriateness of the rules on driving times, breaks and rest periods for drivers engaged in occasional road passenger transport (Regulation (EC) No 561/2006). Despite the objective differences in the working environment, the social provisions adopted in 2020 make no distinction between freight and passenger transport, nor between regular and occasional services.

Rules on driving times, breaks and rest periods in road transport have been a topic of debate since 1969. Specific rules for passenger services were introduced by the Council in 1985, but were later abolished in 2006, and only partly re-introduced in 2009 (for international occasional passenger services). The scope of this proposal, submitted by the Commission on 24 May 2023, is limited to national and international occasional passenger services, which are the most relevant to tourism. The proposal intends to introduce three flexibility elements into the breaks and rest time rules of drivers engaged in occasional passenger transport. The proposal concerns roughly 3% of passenger transport by bus at EU level.

Revised regulation on breaks and rests in occasional passenger transport services, Council’s general approach, 4 December 2023

Regulation amending regulation (EC) No 561/2006 as regards breaks and rests in occasional passenger transport services, Commission’s proposal, 24 May 2023

Photo by Siddharth on Unsplash

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