EU polices emissions

The European Union (EU) will take legal action against member states for failing to police emissions rules, says Automotive News Europe. Industry commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska says she “definitely” wants to begin formal infringement procedures against “not all and not one” member state for allowing vehicle emissions to exceed legal limits. She declined to name which nations would be affected, but says “it will be in the next several weeks, a few months from now because we have to complete the evidence.” “We need a very good legal basis, but I definitely want to start infringements.” Bienkowska says starting in 2019, legislation proposed in the wake of Volkswagen’s emissions-cheating scandal would address the widespread use of software designed to defeat emissions tests. “We have a lot of such examples, some of them are quite shocking,” she says. Under current EU law, the use of defeat devices are legal if they can show that they are needed to protect engines rather than cheat emissions tests. The Volkswagen scandal highlighted an industry-wide disparity between NOx emissions recorded in laboratory tests and those in regular use on roads, which is often five times more. NOx gases contribute to acid rain and respiratory illnesses blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world each year.