Eighteen European Union (EU) member states signed a Joint Declaration of Intent at the Transport Council in Luxembourg on June 8, committing to a coordinated framework for deploying automated vehicles across national borders. The signing took place under the European Automotive Action Plan, announced by the European Commission in March 2025, and brings together Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden.
The declaration is not a binding treaty. It establishes a shared intent to harmonize vehicle approval processes, develop common permitting procedures, and support cross-border deployment use cases in public transport, freight, and logistics. Each signatory retains authority over its own national legal framework, but the agreement creates a structure for mutual recognition of vehicle approvals so that a vehicle certified in one participating country can operate across borders without a full re-approval process in each new jurisdiction.
Two Workstreams: Regulatory Alignment and Practical Deployment
The initiative is structured around two parallel tracks. The first focuses on developing common principles for vehicle approval and permitting, including a cooperative exchange of information between national type-approval authorities and shared safety monitoring after vehicles enter service. The second focuses on practical deployment, organizing activities around specific use cases and operational contexts rather than technology type. The declaration explicitly states the testbed will remain agnostic on any specific technology, leaving use case selection to service providers, public transport authorities, and private operators.
Non-EU companies can participate, but the declaration sets conditions. Any non-EU stakeholder must form a strategic partnership with at least one EU automotive or mobility company and demonstrate meaningful EU presence in manufacturing, employment, research and development, or intellectual property. Partners are also expected to keep data and data flows from testbed activities within the EU. The framing reflects broader European concerns about technology sovereignty in a sector where Chinese autonomous vehicle developers have been expanding aggressively.
$21.8 Million in Digital Infrastructure Funding Launching This Month
The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) 2026 work programme includes approximately $21.8 million, at current exchange rates, for digital infrastructure dedicated to autonomous driving, to be released through a reflow call launching in June. The funding is positioned as a first supporting measure for the testbed initiative rather than its full budget. Phased scaling is built into the design, with the declaration specifying that deployment will begin with small-scale or geographically limited operations before expanding to continuous cross-border service.
