Luxembourg, Germany and France to Experiment on Autonomous Driving

As part of their visit to the International Automobile-Ausstellung (IAA) in Frankfurt, Luxembourg’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy, Étienne Schneider, and the Minister of Sustainable Development and Infrastructure, François Bausch, today signed, together with the German Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Alexander Dobrindt, a joint declaration by the German, French and Luxembourg Governments on the establishment and cooperation of a common digital experimental site for automated driving and connected technology which is a technology of the future located at the intersection between mobility and digitisation.

This agreement affirms the common will of the three countries to promote the development and testing of automated and connected driving technologies, in close connection with intelligent transport systems and taking into account electric mobility and multimodality, all in the framework of a cross-border vision and in a real environment. The France-Germany-Luxembourg experimental site will enable industry and research to test innovative technologies on all road categories (highways, roads, urban roads) as well as to exchange experiences on legal and technical problems encountered in the cross-border use of automated and connected driving technologies.

The cross-border digital experimental site will cover the road network in the central and southern regions of Luxembourg, the Metz region in France and the Saarland in Germany. In this zone, the experimentation of automated and connected driving technologies will be made possible in the first half of 2018.

Co-signatories of the cooperation agreement, Alexander Dobrindt, Federal Minister for Transport and Digital Infrastructure in Germany, Élisabeth Borne, Minister for Transport in France, and Étienne Schneider, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for the Economy, and François Bausch, Minister for Sustainable Development and Infrastructure, share a common desire to move towards a reliable, efficient and sustainable European transport policy.

Moreover, this flagship project in Europe is in line with the common initiatives between the EU Member States and the European Commission, such as the Amsterdam Declaration, which initiated the development of common rules and regulations allowing the circulation of autonomous vehicles on European roads and the letter of intent signed at the Digital Day in Rome to promote large-scale cross-border experimentation of these forms of driving.

Minister Schneider said: “Thanks to its participation in the cross-border automated driving site alongside Germany and France, Luxembourg is once again taking the lead in innovation and technological development. Focused on the development of digitization and intelligent mobility, this project is part of the implementation of the Rifkin strategy for the third industrial revolution.”

Minister Bausch said: “The automatic driving will completely revolutionise our society as the smartphone will have done. Automated and connected driving will soon not only significantly reduce the number of road fatalities but will also create new on-demand mobility services alongside public transport. The future will belong to mobility as a service.”