European Commission: tighter rules for safer/cleaner cars

The 1690 European Commission (EC), European Parliament and the Council have reached a political agreement on the %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 link-external commission proposal from January 2016 false http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-167_en.htm false false%> to raise the quality level and independence of type-approval and testing before a car is placed on the market. It would enable the EC to be able to initiate EU-wide recalls and impose penalties on manufacturers or technical services of up to €30,000 (£26,000) per non-compliant car.

These rules would enforce Member States to carry out regular spot-checks on vehicles already on their market with results made publicly available. In addition, all Member States would be able to immediately take safeguard measures against non-compliant vehicles on their territory without having to wait for the authority that issued the type-approval to act.

Under the proposal, technical services would be regularly and independently audited as part of stringent performance criteria to obtain and maintain their designation by a Member State for testing and inspecting new car models. The EC and Member States would also be able to challenge a designation when something is wrong.

National type-approval authorities would be subject to Commission audits to ensure that the relevant rules are implemented and enforced across the EU.

In the future, the EC will be able to lead a new enforcement forum to ensure uniformity in the interpretation of relevant EU legislation, transparency of non-compliance and more coordinated market surveillance activities by Member States.

Car manufacturers will also have to provide access to the vehicle’s software tools protocols which go in hand with the Real Driving Emissions package to disclose their emissions reductions strategies.

This preliminary political agreement is now subject to formal approval by the European Parliament and Council. It will then become mandatory for all Member States on 1 September 2020.

Elżbieta Bieńkowska, commissioner responsible for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, said: "Dieselgate has revealed the weaknesses of our regulatory and market surveillance system. We know that some car manufacturers were cheating and many others were exploiting loopholes. To put an end to this, we are overhauling the whole system. After almost two years of negotiations, I welcome that the key elements of our proposal have been upheld, including real EU oversight and enforcement powers. In the future, the Commission will be able to carry out checks on cars, trigger EU-wide recalls, and impose fines of up to €30,000 per car when the law is broken."

8054 FIA Region I director general, Laurianne Krid, responded to the new legislation: “Improving the vehicle type approval process is essential to avoid another dieselgate and to restore consumer confidence in the vehicles that they drive. Although today’s compromise is not perfect, we support stronger market surveillance requirements which should help steer car makers to achieve emissions targets in the real world and not just in the laboratory.”

‘With more and more cars becoming connected, the Commission and Member States now have to look at how independent operators, like our members, can be assured that they will get full and fair access to vehicle information. This is essential so that independent operators cannot only test cars properly but also provide key services to motorists both now and in the future”, Krid added.