Nine EU member states have asked the European Commission to allow the polluting emissions limits imposed by the EU directive establishing national emissions ceilings (the former NEC directive) that should have been met in 2015 to be raised so that they no longer appear to have breached them. While governments can request exceptions to the national caps for previous years, called “inventory adjustments”, a group of environmental NGOs argues that unconditional adjustments are unacceptable, for public health and environmental reasons.
The European Environmental Bureau (EEB), AirClim, ClientEarth, the Health and Environment Alliance and Transport & Environment (T&E) wrote to Environment Commissioner Karmenu Vella on 28 July to express their deepest concern at a time when the ambient air quality directive is being breached in 130 cities and 23 member states.
Austria, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Ireland and Luxembourg have all asked for inventory adjustments for 2015, using provisions in the new NEC directive (2016/1184, Article 5) (see EUROPE 11685).
The governments of these countries, with the exception of Finland, are asking for an additional allowance for nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions from diesel vehicles. Germany is singled out in the letter for particular criticism because the country issued the approvals for most of the vehicle models found to be exceeding their limits across Europe – this has echoes of “Dieselgate”. The NGOs point out that, even before the Dieselgate scandal broke, it was known that road vehicles were responsible for additional emissions.
“[National] authorities had much time at their disposal to require carmakers to comply, including mandatory recalls and withdrawal of approvals to take the polluting vehicles off the road. Had the authorities of Germany, France, Spain and Luxembourg ... taken action in line with the Euro Standards Regulation, the inventory adjustments – as well as high NOx emissions in those countries – could have been avoided”, the signatories of the letter state.
They call on the Commission, therefore, when it considers the requests to: - restrict adjustments to the strict minimum; - conduct an assessment of the adjustment requests independently of the evaluation carried out by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE); - check whether the member states have taken measures to offset possible unforeseen emissions from any sector before applying an adjustment; - take into account the impact of approval of the adjustments on human health and the environment. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)