No insurance required for e-bikes
No insurance required for e-bikes
Posted on 23 Jan 2019
Thank you to everyone who lobbied MEPs on the mandatory insurance measure on e-bikes.
Bike Europe has announced the results of the vote held on the 22nd of January.
The European Parliament have come to the agreement that e-bikes do not require compulsory third party liability insurance.
The European Commission's proposal regarding the Motor Insurance Directive (MID) stated that e-bikes should be classed as motor vehicles and therefore third party liability insurance is compulsory. MEPs disputed this claim and the European Cyclists' Federation lobbied against the European Commission's proposal.
Classing e-bikes as motor vehicles and placing mandatory insurance would stump the growth of the e-bike market burdening the consumer, industry and public authorities. Both bicycle users and the bicycle industry disagreed with the statement that e-bikes are motor vehicles.
The Commission's proposal stated that Members States were able to exempt vehicles from the Directive but the ECF argued that this would create a "patchwork of legislation across the EU".
Adam Bodor, ECF Advocacy Director, said:
"This is a sensible decision by the European Parliament IMCO committee. We are happy that they agreed with ECF that there is no need to define e-bikes as motor vehicle and require compulsory third party liability insurance. We ask Member States to follow the lead of the Rapporteur Charanzová and the parliament to exclude pedelecs from this Directive."
The European Parliament's decision doesn't hold legal effect as of yet, but there was strong support for this in the committee with the most likely and supported outcome being that e-bikes are excluded from third party liability insurance.
If this is the case, it means that there will be no compulsory EU-wide insurance measure placed upon e-bikes. Although, there is still the possibility that some mermeber states will unilaterally impose an e-bike insurance requirement.