Brussels, 23/05/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 21 May, the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA), the American Automotive Policy Council (AAPC) and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (Alliance) reiterated their “strong support for an ambitious automotive sector component” in the EU-US trade agreement.
For this reason, the three associations announced that the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and SAFER (a transportation research centre at Chalmers University in Gothenburg) - two of the leading traffic safety research centres in the US and EU - are commencing the second phase of a study aiming to evaluate whether motor vehicles manufactured in compliance with either the EU or US regulatory requirements provide essentially equivalent real-world safety performance when driven on European roads or on US roads. ACEA, AAPC and Alliance believe that the benefits of an agreement can only be reached if sufficient regulatory convergence is achieved. All three associations have been working together since the announcement of the TTIP negotiations to harmonise their positions and deliver supporting evidence of “essentially equivalent” real-world safety performance.
Automotive trade represents 10% of the total EU-US trade. Together, the EU and US represent 32% of global automotive production and 35% of global automotive sales. (EH)