The European Parliament on February 3 approved a new law requiring
on-the-road tests for certain harmful car emissions. The so-called
real-driving-emissions test was agreed shortly after Volkswagen AG
admitted last fall that it had installed software in millions of diesel
cars that allowed it to cheat on tests for nitrogen oxide emissions.
There will be “no new Volkswagen cases in the future,” Elzbieta
Bienkowska, the European Union’s industry commissioner, promised
lawmakers assembled in Strasbourg.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal, however, some lawmakers and environmental groups claimed that it isn’t strict enough.
In December, the parliament’s environment committee had voted to
reject the new testing method, which was agreed in closed-door talks
among officials from EU transport ministries. At the time, the committee
had warned the new rules allowed car makers to exceed existing caps on
NOx emissions for too long after the tests become binding in the fall of
2017.
The bloc’s current limit on such emissions is 80 milligrams a
kilometre. However, under the testing rules, cars emitting as much as
168 mg could still be approved for sale in the EU’s 28 member states
until 2021. From then onward, cars would be allowed to emit as much as
120 mg.
NOx emissions from cars are a major contributor to air pollution,
which kills some 400,000 people in the EU every year, according to the
European Environmental Agency.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal, environmental groups lashed
out against the vote. “It’s disgraceful that the most powerful countries
in Europe think that keeping dirty diesel is good for their car
industry while citizens are poisoned,” Greg Archer, clean vehicles
director at Transport & Environment, was quoted as saying.
http://neurope.eu/article/new-eu-rules-on-car-emissions-backed-by-eu-parliament/