Speaking about European road safety usually is understand as a question of public health only. However, when paradigm shift changes occurs, the widespread of consequences are much more important, because of the impact over this public policy. A paradigm shift (a fundamental change in the way problems are defined and potential solutions evaluated) is occurring in road safety analysis.

The old paradigm assumes that road safety policy must be national policy, since the estimated annual direct and indirect cost of road traffic injuries in the European Union (EU) exceeds € 130 billion, or over 1% of the EU Gross Domestic product (GDP) in 2014, which is becoming increasingly socially unacceptable to justify to citizens. From this perspective, a large number of road safety programmes have been launched and put into effect.

The present paper shows the new European safety paradigm in order to search for domestic and national policy impacts. In this sense, The EU has set itself an ambitious target of halving the yearly number of fatalities. Because of it, a significant progress has been achieved across the EU, and the action has therefore been considered as a strong catalyst of efforts made by Member States to improve an important part of integration process.