European Commission gave car lobby inside data on emissions

Leaked documents from Europe’s car industry suggest it got valuable information from the European Commission that allowed it to weaken emission tests despite the thousands of premature deaths caused by emissions.

The document — a powerpoint prepared by the industry for its members and published by Corporate Europe Observatory — shows “an informal meeting took place in which highly sensitive information was shared between two men heavily involved in the process, one in charge of co-ordinating the industry’s lobbying strategy, one from the governmental body charged with regulating said industry”.

New tests were to be introduced in 2017 but the car industry and its representative lobby body in Brussels, the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) considered the proposed tests and limits to be too stringent.

They met European Commission representatives on a Sunday early last year and were briefed on the developing draft.

Corporate Europe Observatory says the document shows the information from the Commission was used to devise and guide the industry’s strategy, and allowed them to target member states to have them to block commission’s proposals it did not like.

The lobbying watchdog also said the leak, with a graph of the industry’s position on various compromises, shows they would have agreed to more stringent rules but the commission did not push them to.

The commission did not deny the meeting took place but said representations were not made and that they “always act in the European interest, not in the interests of any one group or stakeholder”. Independent MEP and member of Parliament’s environment and public health committee, Nessa Childers, said the leak showed that even the Irish Government, with no car industry to blackmail it, just kowtowed to them.

“Lives and livelihoods are lost prematurely every year across Europe, at an enormous human and financial cost in death and illness, all from levels of air pollution that we can seriously mitigate, once we’re not blinded by the auto industry’s sheen,” she said.

Pascoe Sabino of Corporate Europe said that: “Unfortunately, perpetuating this myth of technical neutrality has allowed car manufacturers and their lobby groups into all relevant parts of the legislative process — from initial thoughts on what a directive should look like up to deciding the fine details of its implementation.”

He said that in the end industry got the weakened test conditions they wanted, loopholes that allow manufacturers to exceed emissions by more than twice the legal limit — and that this was voted through by national governments in October, just a month after the diesel gate fraud was exposed. The parliament passed it in February this year.

“Diesel gate” showed that vehicle manufacturers installed software to fool tests for NOx emissions hiding the fact that emissions were much higher than the legal limits — in the case of Volkswagen some vehicles were generating up to 40 times more than the tests showed.

Corporate Europe Observatory says the leaks are further proof that the Commission’s so called ‘better regulation’ agenda “is in fact putting yet more power in to the hands of industries the commission is supposed to be regulating”.