In a letter to European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans on Friday 9 December, the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) expressed its concerns at the third package of the real driving emissions (RDE) test. The ACEA believes the timescale for implementation is too short for the industry to be able to comply.
The RDE package seeks to put in place approval testing under real driving conditions in order to obtain more accurate measurements of polluting emissions. Two packages have already been adopted in comitology (see EUROPE 11421) and a third is due to be adopted by the technical committee on motor vehicles on 20 December (see EUROPE 11663).
In this third package, the Commission proposes to extend RDE tests to petrol engine cars with the criterion “fine particle number” (PN). The Commission also wants to include adjustments to ways of taking measurements to take account of short, in-town journeys. The new measures are to apply from September 2017.
This is far too short a lead-in period, say the car makers, pointing out that the European Parliament will also have to scrutinise the comitology agreement, meaning that, at best, the final format of the test will be known only in May 2017. Introduction by September 2017 seems to ACEA Secretary General Erik Jonnaert to be impossible to achieve. He points out that changes to the design of vehicles, engines, exhaust systems and assembly lines will be required. Car manufacturers call for “a reasonable approach with sufficient lead-time”.
This request would seem to have been rebuffed by the Commission for the time being. The spokesperson on the internal market and industry, Lucia Caudet, said in a press conference on Friday 9 December that manufacturers had long been aware of the situation and that, consequently, they had had time to make the necessary adjustments.
The Commission is losing patience on this matter, particularly in the face of the slowness of the legislative process on the revision of the approval and market surveillance of motor vehicles (see EUROPE 11664). Making use of all the levers at its disposal, the Commission opened infringement proceedings on Thursday 8 December against seven member states for failing to fully implement European vehicle type approval legislation (see EUROPE 11685). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)