Vehicle circulation

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has addressed the dissemination of alerts about road checks in navigation services. The matter began when a company that offered driving assistance through geolocation requested a French court to overturn a regulation that prohibited certain alerts. Among the affected checks were those for alcohol, drugs, and judicial police operations.

The company argued that this prohibition clashed with the Directive 2000/31/EC, on electronic commerce, and imposed a general obligation to monitor the information shared by its users. In light of these doubts, the French court suspended the proceedings and raised three questions to the CJEU.

The first idea is that prohibiting those alerts affects the functioning of the service which limits one of its usual functions. Therefore, the measure falls within the matters regulated by the European directive. It is not, therefore, a prohibition unrelated to the rules that protect the provision of these electronic services.

However, this protection does not prevent any restriction. The public order and safety can justify prohibiting the dissemination of certain alerts, even when the company is established in another member state. But a general prohibition applied indiscriminately to an entire category of companies is not valid, as the measure must be directed at a specific service and be proportionate . It will be the national court that assesses whether it meets that requirement.

It also matters what the platform does with the messages. It is not the same to act as a neutral intermediary as it is to decide, through an algorithm, what information is displayed, how it appears, and what priority it receives. That control over the dissemination prevents being exempt from criminal or administrative liability.

Finally, the CJEU separates two issues :

- the possible exemption from liability and

- the possibility of prohibiting certain notices.

Although the company could benefit from an exemption , that would not, by itself, prevent it from being prohibited from disseminating information about certain controls for reasons of public order or security.

If you are affected by a sanctioning procedure in traffic matters, our professionals can provide you with appropriate advice and defend your interests.