EU VOTE COULD SAVE UK MOTOR SPORT
Sport may still be exempt from insurance law
National motorsport took a giant leap towards safety last week when an EU committee voted to exclude the sport from an insurance law which had threatened to send it spiralling into chaos.
The 2014 Vnuk court case set a precedent that all vehicles in the EU should have insurance, even if they are being used on private land, and that the Motor Insurance Directive (MID) was being interpreted incorrectly. The MID is the document that tells EU countries how to make motor insurance rules.
That would mean all cars competing in motorsport events in Europe would need to be insured individually, and instances such as cars colliding on a racetrack could become road traffic accidents and involve the police.
Dan Dalton, an MEP for the West Midlands, is the son of a former marshal and timekeeper and had put forward the motion of excluding motorsport from the amended wording of the MID to the EU Parliamentary committee he sits on.
The internal market committee voted on the amendment last Tuesday (January 22) and sided with excluding motorsport from the implementation of the new insurance law.
Dalton had previously said that the result was “too close to call”.
The amendment still needs to be passed by the main parliament, but it rarely goes against the decisions of its committees and the vote in the committee was seen as the most important.
“I am relieved that my fellow MEPS from this committee listened to my concerns about the risk this draft law poses to British motorsport,” Dalton told Motorsport News.
“As the son of a former marshal, I know that this is a way of life for many people in the UK. This is a victory for common sense regulation.
“What happens next is that all MEPS will vote on this compromise at one of the next meetings in Strasbourg.
“This could be as early as February As a general rule, they will follow what has been agreed by our committee.”
Despite the success, Motorsport UK CEO Hugh Chambers has warned that motorsport isn’t out of the woods yet.
The law still needs to be passed before EU elections in May. If it isn’t passed by then, it would likely have to start again and that could be catastrophic for Britain as it likely won’t have any MEPS by then because of Brexit.