The European Commission has rejected a recommendation by its own experts to significantly tighten rules on highly polluting cars.
The Guardian has obtained internal documents from the commission which show that it rejected expert advice that would have put a serious brake on the production of highly polluting cars when it drafted the new EU emissions standard, Euro 7. In practice, this could mean that
AROUND 100 MILLION SUCH VEHICLES COULD CONTINUE TO BE PRODUCED BY CAR MANUFACTURERS IN THE COMING YEARS.
The Guardian recalled that in 2018, emissions of pollutants (mainly nitrogen oxides and particulate matter) still caused approximately 70,000 deaths per year. For this reason, the European Commission has been expected for years to tighten vehicle emission standards again. Euro 7 has effectively been delayed for years, and even in the best-case scenario would not come into force until 2025.
A consortium of EU experts, CLOVE (Consortium for ultra Low Vehicle Emissions), has drawn up a mid-way proposal for the European Commission on the new standard. They estimate that the new tightening would have reduced nitrogen oxide emissions from an average of 60 to 30 milligrams per kilometre, while emissions of particulate matter would have fallen from 4.5 to 2 per kilometre.
THIS WOULD HAVE SAVED €136 BILLION A YEAR IN HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS AT EU LEVEL.
The cost of this would have been to force car manufacturers to improve engines and use less polluting technologies, increasing the average price of petrol vehicles by around 0.8% and diesel vehicles by 2.2%.
This proposal has now been rejected by the committee, according to The Guardian. Anna Krajinska, a leader of transport activist group Transport & Environment (T&E), said.
THE COMMISSION HAS ESSENTIALLY CREATED A DIESEL SCANDAL FOR ITSELF WITH THIS DECISION.
She said that the car industry had already lobbied hard against the restrictions, and now the European Commission appeared to have given in to their demands “at the expense of the health of millions of Europeans”.
According to The Guardian, the details of the Euro 7 standard are expected to be published in half a month, on 9 November, so the commission could in theory change its position before then. The change would also be timely, as the last regulation, Euro 6, was issued in 2014 – a year before Volkswagen’s infamous diesel scandal, which affected the entire global car industry and significantly affected the perception of emissions.