en.Wedoany.com Reported - On June 8, 18 EU member states signed a Joint Declaration of Intent at the Luxembourg Transport Council, committing to establish a coordination framework for the cross-border deployment of autonomous vehicles. Signed under the framework of the European Automotive Action Plan announced by the European Commission in March 2025, the participating countries include Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden.
This declaration is not legally binding, but establishes a common intention to coordinate vehicle approval processes, develop general licensing procedures, and support cross-border deployment use cases in public transport, freight, and logistics. Each signatory retains authority over its national legal framework, but the agreement establishes a structure for mutual recognition of vehicle approvals, allowing vehicles certified in one participating country to operate across borders without undergoing full re-approval in each new jurisdiction.
The initiative is structured around two parallel tracks: regulatory coordination and field deployment. The regulatory coordination workstream focuses on developing common principles for vehicle approval and licensing, including cooperative information exchange between national type-approval authorities and shared safety monitoring after vehicles are put into service. The field deployment workstream focuses on practical deployment, organizing activities around specific use cases and operational environments rather than technology types. The declaration states that the test platform remains neutral toward any specific technology, with use case selection determined by service providers, public transport authorities, and private operators.
Non-EU companies can participate, but with conditions. Any non-EU stakeholder must establish a strategic partnership with at least one EU automotive or mobility company and demonstrate a meaningful EU presence in manufacturing, employment, R&D, or intellectual property. Partners are also required to retain data and data flows generated by test platform activities within the EU. This framework reflects European concerns over technological sovereignty in the autonomous driving sector, particularly against the backdrop of aggressive expansion by Chinese autonomous driving developers.
The 2026 work program of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) includes approximately $21.8 million (at current exchange rates) dedicated to digital infrastructure for autonomous driving, which will be disbursed through a refinancing tender launched in June. This funding is positioned as the first support measure for the test platform initiative, rather than the full budget. The design includes phased expansion, with the declaration stating that deployment will begin with smaller-scale or geographically limited operations, then expand to ongoing cross-border services.
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