On Friday 14 June, the European Commission presented a new legislative proposal to amend Regulation 2016/646, amending Regulation 692/2008 as regards emissions from passenger cars (Euro 6).
The objective is to reintroduce the validated compliance factors in comitology, this time through the ordinary legislative procedure involving the European Parliament and the Council of the EU.
This proposal follows a judgment of the General Court last December (see EUROPE 12273/3). The General Court had rejected certain provisions of the second RDE Act concerning compliance factors, which define the permissible deviation between the regulatory emission limit and the values measured in real driving, on the grounds that the comitology procedure was not adapted to amend fundamental aspects of the Regulation.
The Commission is thus renewing the values adopted under the comitology procedure and the revisions of the RDE standards (see EUROPE 11421/10), namely: the compliance factors of 2.1 for new car models until 2020 and 1.43 after 2020.
“The Commission has not modified the compliance factors to ensure stability for national authorities and the automotive industry. The Commission will now forward the draft legislation to the European Parliament and the Council of the EU”, explains the institution in its press release.
A late but beneficial initiative
The announcement was welcomed by Transport & Environment (T&E), a European organisation that advocates sustainable mobility. But for Jens Müller, T&E expert on air quality issues, the initiative comes late.
“The European Commission's decision is naturally welcome, but in the end, it will not change much when you consider the timetable. The 2.1 compliance factor, by far the most controversial, will lapse by 2021, when the 2nd compliance factor, 1.43, will be applied”, he explained to EUROPE. “It is on this second factor that we must act, to lower it even further, based on the latest scientific results”.
For the expert, the proposal also presents another risk: that of over-politicising the issue, at the risk of making scientific studies less and less audible.
Last May, T&E presented a study stating that it was already possible to meet the standards set by the Euro 6 standard under real driving conditions.
Link to the T&E study: https://bit.ly/2F9gPnr (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)