Parliament backs new CO2 limits for vans

EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said after the vote: "I welcome today's vote by the European Parliament in favour of significantly reducing CO2 emissions from vans. This regulation will bring important fuel savings for van users. It also gives vehicle manufacturers greater certainty about the emission targets they need to reach. At the same time it will contribute to cleaner air and to achieving our climate targets."

The bill's sponsor in the European Parliament, UK Conservative MEP Martin Callanan (European Conservatives and Reformists), highlighted what he considered the positives of the new legislation.

"This legislation has been a difficult balancing act between setting ambitious but attainable environmental targets for manufacturers," he said. "Manufacturers will now have certainty about the standards that they will be expected to meet, with more realistic penalties than those proposed by the commission if they are unable to do so."

The Greens/European Free Alliance group in the European Parliament slammed the new legislation for being too weak to stimulate green innovation among carmakers and falling short of the necessary steps to prevent climate change. 

"An already weak Commission proposal on CO2 emissions limits was further weakened by the Parliament and Council, with the full implementation of the initial binding limits delayed until 2017," said German MEP Rebecca Harms, a Greens/EFA group co-president. 

She described the legislation as a missed opportunity for preventing climate change, and an example of "capitulating to the demands of auto-industry laggards".

European car manufacturers' association ACEA said the deal sets "extremely challenging targets" for the industry, "in particular for the long term". "The goalposts are now set and the automobile industry will do its utmost to meet these targets," said Ivan Hodac, secretary-general of ACEA. 

The objectives "will require the market introduction of breakthrough technologies that are far away from being a viable business option," Hodac added, saying that light commercial vehicles have "a substantially longer development phase as well as product cycle than passenger cars".

German liberal MEP Holger Krahmer, shadow rapporteur for the Parliament's liberal group (ALDE), sought to play down the importance of the vote, saying the "global climate does not depend on European vans".

"The target is ambitious. From an economical perspective, it is not easy to achieve, but at least it is realistic. To call for more reduction would be exaggeration. Rescuing the world’' climate does not depend on the emissions from European light commercial vehicles' exhaust," Krahmer said.

The Socialists and Democrats group in Parliament welcomed the new regulation but regretted that the EU was unable to reach a more ambitious target for 2020. "Our group tried to push for a faster reduction of emissions, but this is the best compromise that we could reach at this point," said Matthias Groote, S&D shadow rapporteur on the proposal.

"This deal is better than no deal at all, because measures are urgent. However, the revision of this regulation in 2014 will be an opportunity to set higher standards. We hope that in three years there will be new technologies that will help the industry produce cheaper and more efficient green vehicles."

German GUE/NGL MEP Sabine Wils criticised MEPs for caving in to pressure from car manufacturers. "The lobbying by manufacturers was nothing new," she said. "Just as in previous occasions, they decreed that consumers must be burdened with the costs on the argument that European manufacturers would be disadvantaged and that there would be difficulties in technical conversion."

T&E, an environmental NGO, regretted that the initial Commission proposal had been weakened under pressure from the industry. "Because CO2 emissions and fuel efficiency are directly linked, weaker emissions standards mean vans will use more fuel. Fuel is a major cost to small businesses who depend on vans to run their operations."

Kerstin Meyer, senior campaigner at T&E, said: "The industry used a short dip in sales to justify weakening a 10-year strategy to improve fuel efficiency, that would have saved van operators money for many years to come. When vehicle manufacturers cry wolf yet again, policymakers should take a long term view."