EU reaches informal deal on future car CO₂ emissions

27 November 2013

European Parliament and member states negotiators have reached an informal agreement on the 2020 CO₂ emission target of 95 g/km for new cars. The deal culminates months of negotiations with Germany who insisted on weakening the earlier proposal to make the future CO₂ emission rules more flexible for German manufacturers of large, luxury vehicles.

Under the agreement, the phase-in of the 95 g/km CO₂ emission limit would be extended by one year, until 2021. In 2020, 95% of each manufacturer’s new vehicle fleet must comply with the new CO₂ standards.

The availability of super-credits—favorable weightings for cars below 50 g CO₂ within a manufacturer’s range—would be extended over 2020-2022, and capped at 7.5 g/km over that period. Under the original proposal, super-credits were to be available until 2020 and capped at 2.5 g/km.

"Our objective was to stand firm and not weaken our targets, in order not to hold back innovation in the car industry and EU efforts against climate change. We accepted a very limited phase-in of one year only, combined with super-credits. We regret that some member states in the Council have tried to delay confirmation of a deal between the institutions. This could have dragged the procedure out until the next Parliament, while the automotive sector needs long-term certainty for its investments” said Environment Committee chair Matthias Groote (S&D, DE).

The car CO₂ emission rules must be approved by both the European Parliament and Council to enter into force. Although an agreement was reached between the institutions on the new rules in June, national governments’ representatives in the “COREPER” committee had postponed a decision to endorse the deal. Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose party received money from BMW, supported the big German carmakers declaring she was protecting German jobs, and persuaded other EU member states to scrap the agreement that was reached in June.

The new text will be examined by COREPER on Friday.

Source: EU Parliament | Reuters