The European Court of Auditors announced in May 2023 that it intends to audit the EU's efforts to meet its road safety objectives. It will be the first time that the Court has been involved in this field. The trigger for the Court's intervention was the latest road safety figures, which revealed a 3% increase in road fatalities in 2022 compared to 2021, as traffic levels recovered after the Covid-19 pandemic.

In its work, the Court will analyse whether the European Commission has taken appropriate action to meet its objective of halving road fatality figures by 2030 and to have no fatalities at all, the so-called 'Vision Zero', in 2050. The assessment will include taking a look at whether the selection and design of transport infrastructure projects that focus on improving road safety actually contributed to the intended road safety objectives.

In 2020, the Court of Auditors investigated the extent to which EU funds contributed to improving sustainable urban mobility. The subsequent report called on the European Commission to improve the uptake of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs), and to make these a precondition for the receipt of any EU funding on transport, and to create and publish better data on urban mobility.

Article published first at tti on 1 June 2023.

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