MEPs take hard line on car emissions

Date: 29/05/1997

By Michael Mann

EU ENVIRONMENT ministers are expected to reach initial agreement next month on the European Commission's plans to reduce toxic emissions from cars over the next decade.

But the deal looks likely to bring EU governments into direct conflict with the European Parliament, which last month surprised everyone by adopting amendments hitting the car industry hard while offering the oil business in southern member states a potential way out of tough new standards.

Most observers expect a deal to be tied up only after six weeks of conciliation talks between the two institutions. Early bets are that the final shape of the new legislation will look fairly similar to the Commission's original ideas, with tougher limits on the sulphur and benzene content of fuels and slightly tighter emission standards.

In their first reading of the proposals in April, MEPs came up with a set of amendments which pleased no one.

Oil industry lobby Europia claimed they had disregarded three years of research carried out under the 'Auto-Oil Programme'. “The proposed changes would cost - on the fuels side - an extra 50 billion ecu, equivalent to half Europe's exports to the US last year,” said a spokesman for the organisation.

Carmakers' lobby ACEA, widely criticised for its low-key lobbying effort, had to stomach the Parliament adopting the broad outline of changes suggested by German Socialist Bernd Lange, which hardened up emission targets and turned levels set for 2005 into mandatory standards rather than the indicative goals proposed by the Commission.

This did not, however, do much to please environmental campaigners. The European Federation for Transport and Environment (T&E) was particularly appalled by the Parliament's attempt to write exemptions into the legislation for the oil industry in poorer member states.

The result of intense lobbying on a national basis, this would allow any country which could prove “severe economic difficulties” to obtain a derogation from new fuel standards until the start of 2005, rather than having to apply them from the first day of the new millennium.

Green campaigners now hope that the granting of such exemptions will be firmly linked to EU governments ensuring respect for targets set out in last year's framework air quality directive.

Given the particular pollution problems faced by Greece, Spain and Portugal, environmentalists believe this would limit the impact of the Parliament's plan.

Attention has now turned to the Council of Ministers. Although specialist committees have failed to resolve major differences between member states, officials nevertheless expect agreement on a common position when environment ministers meet on 19-20 June.

“It is very likely that we will get a common position, although a lot of issues remain unresolved, especially on fuel standards. These are political matters that officials cannot decide, but the Dutch have a lot of work to do to bring the different sides together,” said one diplomat.

The Nordic countries, plus Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, are arguing for more stringent standards, especially on the sulphur and benzene content of fuels. Southern member states take the opposite view. The two camps are similarly divided over whether standards for 2005 should be compulsory or indicative. A likely halfway house would probably take the form of a slightly tightened version of the Commission's original proposals.

It would then be up to MEPs to decide how much further they want to push.

Few doubt that they will want to take the issue to conciliation, probably in the first few months of 1998.