The Council of the European Union (EU) approved on Tuesday a proposal to give car manufacturers more years to cut the polluting emissions of new vehicles, in light of the set deadline of 2025.
“The Council adopted a specific amendment to the regulation on CO2 (carbon dioxide) standards for new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles, with the aim of granting car manufacturers the necessary flexibility to meet their emission targets for 2025. This is the final step in the decision-making process”, states the communication from the Council of the European Union.
The now-amended regulation, which will come into effect soon, stipulates that compliance with specific emission targets by manufacturers will be assessed based on the average performance of each manufacturer over three years, 2025, 2026, and 2027.
It is worth noting that the current rules set annual targets, covering five-year periods, to reduce the average CO2 emissions of the entire European vehicle fleet, with a 15% annual reduction target below 2021 levels expected to apply from 2025 to 2029.
However, in March of this year, the European Commission proposed an amendment to the regulation establishing performance standards regarding CO2 emissions for new passenger cars and new light commercial vehicles, aiming for greater flexibility regarding the targets set between 2025 and 2027.
In this way, the proposed change will allow manufacturers to meet their obligations for the years 2025, 2026, and 2027 by calculating the average of their performance over a three-year period, rather than each year separately.
This new rule will enable car manufacturers to balance any excess annual emissions by exceeding the target in the following year or years, thus giving them more time (two or three years) to meet these environmental goals.
The measure now approved by the Council of the European Union comes at a time when the European automotive sector is facing strong competition from China in electric vehicles, along with threats of heavy tariffs imposed by the U.S. president on the import of cars to the U.S.
It should be noted that the automotive sector of the European Union employs about 13.8 million people, approximately 6.1% of the total workforce, and represents about 7% of the EU’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
