Motorsports Spared from New EU Auto Insurance Rules

The European Union Parliament on Feb. 13 voted in favor of new laws to  protect victims of road accidents across the EU, and also to exclude any vehicles not used ‘in traffic’ and motorsport vehicles from the scope of the new EU Motor Insurance Directive (MID).

Parliamentary representatives, through their IMCO Committee, must now negotiate these rules with the EU Council of Ministers to gain their approval before they come into force. The council, which consists of an individual minister from each EU Member State, could take a different position from that of members of parliament and decide to keep motorsport in this legislation.

“The MIA are delighted with this vote. We are grateful to those MEPs who understood the damage which the original interpretation of the VNUK ruling would have done to employment across EU motorsport,” said Chris Aylett, CEO of the MIA “We need to support their work throughout the next stage of this process to make certain each national Minister on the Council of the EU supports the Parliament’s proposals. Just one more lap to go but, as always, it’s the most important one.”

Under the new legislation, road vehicle users across the EU must have a minimum level of insurance protection for personal injuries of, at least 6.07 million Euros per accident, or 1.22 million Euros per victim, and for damage to property the minimum will be 1.22 million Euros per claim.

“This compulsory and significant level of motor insurance protection would have applied to each and every motorsport accident at every level of the sport – on or off track, FIA/FIM regulated or not, in every EU country,” said Chris Aylett ” Thankfully, MEPS listened to insurers who made it clear this was an uninsurable level of uncalculatable risk -“ and without insurance there would be no EU motorsport of any kind and our industry would close.”

Should the Council of the EU need to vote then it will rely on a ‘qualified majority’ with each country having a set number of votes. Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland have the largest number but the vote allocation of each country is extremely valuable.