The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice, Michal Bobek, in his opinion presented on Thursday 10 June, considered that the Court should reject the appeals lodged by Germany and Hungary against the judgment of the General Court which annulled the nitrogen oxide (NOx) emission limits set by the European Commission in the case of tests under real driving conditions.
In 2016, in the wake of the “Dieselgate” scandal, the European Commission introduced in an amending regulation (Regulation 2016/646) a real-world driving conditions test procedure to complement the results obtained in the laboratory (see EUROPE 11421/10).
However, the Institution had amended the Regulation to set correction coefficients to take account of statistical and technical uncertainties in measurement under real conditions. Following an appeal by Paris, Brussels and Madrid, the EU General Court annulled the European Commission’s regulation in 2018 on the grounds that it set NOx emission limits too high.
The European Commission, but also Germany and Hungary, appealed against the General Court’s judgment to the EU Court of Justice.
The Advocate General concluded that the General Court was right. As a matter of form, the Commission’s amending regulation does affect the three cities directly. Consequently, the appeals of the three capitals against the regulation are admissible.
On the substance, the Advocate General considers that the Commission had amended an essential element of the regulation, which can only be amended by the Parliament and the EU Council. Thus, the Advocate General agrees with the General Court that the Commission has, in practice, amended the Euro 6 standard set out in the type-approval regulation. It therefore proposes that all three appeals be dismissed.
For the opinion of the Advocate General: https://bit.ly/3zf6VLz (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)