Brussels, 27/01/2016 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission is expected to present a detailed legislative proposal during the course of this year on the remuneration system to be proposed in the overhaul, announced on Wednesday 27 January, of the so-called EU type approval framework which seeks to raise the quality and independence of vehicle testing and improve the oversight of cars already in circulation.
At present, car makers make direct payment to technical bodies (laboratories) to carry out standardisation testing. The laboratories are wholly dependent on this income, a situation which can cast doubt on the objectivity of the results of their tests (see EUROPE 11476). To avoid this risk, the Commission wants to put in place a system where remuneration would be collected by the member states which would the pay the laboratories. The member states will have to put in place a remuneration framework (a pool system) to cover the costs of type-approval certification, market monitoring and conformity of production review assessments.
This remuneration system will contribute to the centralised technical body assessment system - an innovation of the Commission proposal - that is to say, setting up joint audits by the Commission and national experts, as well as organising on-site visits for peer-reviews of the equipment and premises of these technical bodies. “Precise arrangements will be agreed in the course of this year and a legislative proposal brought forward”, a source told EUROPE. Agreement is to be reached between the Commission and the member states on the level of remuneration and criteria for re-allocating the revenue, according to the same source.
How laboratories are to be monitored will be detailed by delegated acts within the next two years, the Commission says. The Commission will chair an “Enforcement Forum” which will develop common compliance verification strategies with member states and organise joint audits of technical services and peer reviews of type-approval authorities. The Commission will also be able to evaluate national approval and laboratory monitoring systems. For this, it will strengthen existing market monitoring systems, such as RAPEX (Rapid Alert System) for products which present a health or safety risk to consumers, and ICSMS (Information and Communication System on Market Surveillance), an online network of European market monitoring bodies.
Another of the provisions proposed by the Commission relates to the very nature of the checks. The current rules deal mainly with ex ante controls - that is, carried out as vehicles come off the production line and models scheduled for approval. In future, the Commission will be able to carry out a posteriori checks on vehicles already on the market. It will have the power to remove or recall vehicles or impose administrative fines on car manufacturers found to be in breach of the rules. These fines could be up to €30,000 per vehicle where member states fail to act. “We have used the American system as our model. It has proved to be particularly dissuasive”, the Commission says. The laboratories, too, could face fines if their checks are not up to the mark. The size of the fines will be determined by forthcoming delegated acts.
Plans for a European agency would appear, for the moment, to have been put on the back burner by Internal Market and Industry Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska. “At present, I believe that we have a good, stringent system”, she told EUROPE. “I think that, before setting up new bodies, it is more important to focus on implementation” (of EU rules), said Jyrki Katainen, Commission Vice-President with responsibility for growth and investment, indicating that it is precisely where the problem lies. The quality of the checks can vary from one laboratory to another. Another source indicated that there were three reasons for Bienkowska's stance: first, she was insistent upon a budgetary neutral solution; second, it would appear that an impact study has shown that an agency of this sort would bring no added value; third, the Commission wanted the system up and running very quickly and this would not have been possible with such an agency. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)