The European Parliament commission of enquiry into diesel vehicle emissions (EMIS commission) is finishing off its work before the adoption of its final report. At the same time, the European Commission is continuing to provide MEPs with key documents, according to a Parliamentary source on Wednesday 25 January.
The Commission is said to have provided the EMIS commission with a document dating back to June 2015 for Tomasz Husak, Head of Cabinet for the Commissioner for Internal Market and Industry, Elżbieta Bieńkowska.
This document draws up a balance sheet of the positions taken by the member states with regard to legislation on real driving emissions (RDE). The document focuses on the concerns and requests made by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), which criticised the “over-ambitious” objectives of the second RDE at the time.
Telling document in Volkswagen scandal. The document particularly highlights the fact that European legislation on nitric oxide emissions “must be considered as an almost complete failure until now”. This is a prophetic and troubling observation given the fact that it was published a few weeks before the Volkswagen invalidation devices scandal broke out.
The same source regrets that, “We were a bit surprised (to put it nicely) that the Commission has sent the document only now, some weeks before the end of the inquiry committee”. It also says that the document makes it clear that the Commission was well aware of the problems and should have acted before. It subsequently explains that “We will therefore push for clear and strong criticism on the Commission in the final report”. This report is due to be adopted by the EMIS Commission on 28 February.
During the entirety of the investigation, the European Commission adopted a rather ambivalent attitude by blocking, for example, access to certain committee documents (see EUROPE 11623). This week, MEPs from the Greens expressed their bewilderment that the Commission had decided to send important documents so very late in the process (see EUROPE 11710). (Original verision in French by Pascal Hansens)