About ERRU
In order to better monitor the compliance of road transport with the rules in force, the European Commission has set up ERRU, a system that allows a better exchange of information between Member States.
The ERRU will in particular allow exchange of information about:
- transport managers who are declared unfit to manage the activities of a road transport undertaking;
- the most serious infringements committed by hauliers in any Member State, which may lead to the loss of good repute;
- other infringements committed by hauliers in any Member State.
The ERRU system provides a means to interconnect the national registries through the exchange of structured (XML) messages to a central hub.
Usage
Eight types of XML messages can be exchanged. Their format is described as part of the ERRU XML guidelines. The XML messages are the following: Infringement Notification Message, Infringement Response Message, Search Request Message, Search Response Message, Statistics Data Message, Types Message, Acknowledgement Message (used to acknowledge the receipt of a message) and Invalid Message.
ERRU is implemented in two categories of systems: in the ERRU XML Central Messaging system hosted by European Commission, and in the local Competent Authority (CA application developed by each Member State to use the ERRU services). About one third of the Member States has implemented ERRU.
e-Document engineering method
The rules concerning the “interconnection of national electronic registers on road transport undertakings”, as published in the Official Journal of the European Union, describe that the interconnection takes the form of an XML messaging framework. Member States can chose to exchange XML messages via a central hub or peer-to-peer.
In order to allow that, ERRU provides an XML Schema Definition (XSD), resulting in standard XML messages for all users of the system with common fields and understanding across the countries. No other tool is available for creating documents: each Member State has to develop its own gateway and process platform to their local information and databases.
An XSD schema foresees a standard header for all types of messages and the elements can be re-used whenever possible.
The e-Document formats haven't been created using a standardised e-Document engineering method. The ERRU XML Messaging Reference Guide provides guidelines for generating accurate and standard documents.
- Library of data elements: Each type of message has its own information requirement model bound to the actual syntax using the syntax binding methodology described in the XML Messaging Reference Guide and compliant with the XSD Schema.
- Naming and design rules: No explicit naming and design rules have been followed for the creation of the ERRU XML Schemas.
- e-Document engineering tools: ERRU only provides the XSD Schemas, but no tools to build e-Documents. ERRU provides software requirements to help Member States designing a solution for exchanging XML messages.
- Representation techniques: The information requirement models in the XML guidelines are represented by XSD Schemas.