EU Ministers back cross-border initiative for autonomous vehicle testbeds

Today, on the margins of the Transport Council in Luxembourg, 18 Member States signed a Joint Declaration of Intent on large-scale cross-border testbeds for autonomous vehicles together with Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism, Apostolos Tzitzikostas.

The signing marks an important milestone under the European Automotive Action Plan and reflects a shared ambition to accelerate the harmonised deployment of autonomous vehicles across Europe in a safe, coordinated and competitive way for Europe's industry.

The initiative will support the cross-border deployment of autonomous vehicle use cases in areas such as public transport, freight and logistics by strengthening cooperation on interoperability, regulatory approaches and practical implementation. Participating Member States will work together on common principles for approval and coordinated permitting procedures, alongside concrete deployment activities across Europe.

Deployment activities will be organised around specific use cases and operational needs, helping to facilitate large-scale testing and future commercial deployment across borders. The initiative aims to provide greater regulatory certainty for innovators and investors while supporting the competitiveness of Europe's autonomous vehicle ecosystem.

The Joint Declaration was signed by Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Polen, and Sweden.

Background

The large-scale cross-border testbed initiative for autonomous vehicles was launched under the European Automotive Action Plan. It aims to support the harmonised commercial pre-deployment of autonomous vehicles across Europe by bringing together Member States, regional and local authorities, industry stakeholders and transport operators.

The initiative foresees two parallel workstreams: one focused on developing common principles and coordinated approaches for permitting and approval procedures, and another focused on practical deployment activities and use-case clustering, notably in public transport, freight and logistics.

As a first supporting measure, the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) 2026 work programme foresees EUR 20 million for digital infrastructure dedicated to autonomous driving under the reflow call to be launched in June this year.