Parliament committee EU is in favor of mandatory import of car alarm system eCall

The European Parliament Committee on the Internal Market has supported the mandatory introduction of the eCall system. It therefore seems likely that from October 2015 all new cars in the EU should be able to call emergency services in the event of an accident.

The European Parliament’s Internal Market Committee voted on Tuesday to introduce the rules governing the eCall system. This represents a new hurdle for implementation. The full EU parliament will vote on the system on 26 February. The alarm system has been in the making for years and the European Commission presented legislation for its implementation in the summer of last year.

Based on the plan, cars must be equipped with the system from October 2015, for which they must, among other things, be equipped with a SIM card. Member States must also make their telephone networks and an emergency center suitable. In the event of a collision or other calamity, the eCall system is automatically activated. 112 is then automatically called and, among other things, the position of the crashed vehicle and the direction in which the vehicle was traveling are sent. It can also be activated manually.

Currently, cars are already equipped with eCall, but this would represent only 0.7 percent of all passenger cars in the EU. The EU estimates that the installation of the automatic emergency call system would cost about 100 euros extra per car.