Last December 7th, the EU co-legislators (European Parliament, the Council and the Commission) have reached an agreement on the Commission proposal from Jnauary 2016 to increase checks of cars that are already on the EU market and strengthen the voerall system with European oversight. The main building blocks of the new rules are:
- Raise the quality level and independence of type-approval and testing before a car is placed on the market: Technical services, responsible of vehicles emission quantification in new models, will be regularly and independently audited.
- Increase checks of cars that are already on the EU market: Member States will have to carry out regular spot-checks on vehicles already on their market and such results will be made publicly available. All Member States will now be able to immediately take safeguard measures against non-compliant vehicles on their terrritory without having to wait for the authority that issued the type-approval to take action, as is currently still the case
- European oversight: The Commission will carry out market checks independently from Member States and will have the possibility to initiate EU-wide recalls. This institution will be able to impose adminsitrative penalties on manufacturers or technical services of up to €30,000 per non-compliant car
The preliminary political agreement is now subject to formal approval by the European Parliament and Council. The regulation will then be directly applicable in all Member States and will become mandatory on 1 September 2020.
The Commission has supported Member States´work by developing a common testing methodology to screen for defeat devices altering the results of laboratory tests and ensure consistency of results of national investigations.
Full text available here.