EU reaches agreement to strengthen vehicle type approval system

8 December 2017

The European Parliament, the Council and the Commission reached a political agreement to strengthen the EU vehicle type approval framework by introducing elements of European oversight and requirements for checking on manufacturers’ ongoing compliance with the law. The action follows the proposal from January 2016.

Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska, responsible for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, said: “Dieselgate has revealed the weaknesses of our regulatory and market surveillance system. We know that some car manufacturers were cheating and many others were exploiting loopholes. To put an end to this, we are overhauling the whole system. After almost two years of negotiations, I welcome that the key elements of our proposal have been upheld, including real EU oversight and enforcement powers. In the future, the Commission will be able to carry out checks on cars, trigger EU-wide recalls, and impose fines of up to €30,000 per car when the law is broken.”

The main building blocks of the new rules are:

• Strengthened quality and independence of type-approval and testing before a car is placed on the market:
  • Technical services will be regularly and independently audited to obtain and maintain their designation by a member state for testing and inspecting new car models. The Commission and other member states will be able to challenge a designation.
  • National type-approval authorities will be subject to Commission audits.
  • However, the Commission’s proposal to modify the remuneration system to avoid that technical services are paid directly by the manufacturer was not maintained.
• Increase checks of cars that are already on the EU market:
  • While the current type-approval rules deal mainly with ex ante controls of prototypes taken from the production line, in the future member states will have to carry out regular spot-checks on vehicles already on their roads, at a rate of at least one for every 40,000 newly-registered vehicles (with a minimum of five tests per member state). 20% of these tests will be on emissions. The test results will be made publicly available.
  • All member states will now be able to immediately take safeguard measures against non-compliant vehicles on their territory without having to wait for the authority that issued the type-approval to take action, as is currently the case.
• European oversight:
  • In the future, the Commission will carry out market checks independently from member states and will have the possibility to initiate EU-wide recalls. It will have the power to challenge the designation of technical services, and to impose administrative penalties on manufacturers or technical services of up to €30,000 per non-compliant car.
  • The Commission will lead a new enforcement forum to ensure a more uniform interpretation of relevant EU legislation, complete transparency on cases of non-compliance, and better and more coordinated market surveillance activities by member states.

The new Regulation maintains the current ban on defeat devices, but goes a step further—in the future, car manufacturers will have to provide access to the car’s software protocols.

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.

Under current rules, the EU sets the vehicle emission standards, but the enforcement of emission compliance is entirely delegated to national authorities. Once a car is certified in one member state, it can circulate freely throughout the EU. Only the national authority that type approved a car can take remedial action such as ordering a recall. In the European practice, once a vehicle model has been granted a type approval, it is normally never checked for ongoing compliance. EU type approvals are valid for many years, provided there are no changes to the vehicle model, and do not require annual renewals.

The agreement was welcomed by both the auto industry and by public policy groups.

The Type-Approval Regulation complements other important regulatory changes, including the Real Driving Emissions (RDE) testing requirements that became effective from September 2017.

Source: European Commission