European Commission Resists German Push to Amend EU Car Emissions Law

摘要

The European Commission June 7 pushed back against a German proposal to amend European Union legislation in order to clarify when automakers can use so-called defeat devices that modify vehicle pollutant emissions. In a paper submitted to a meeting of EU member country transport ministers, Germany said an investigation in the wake of the exposure of emissions-test cheating by Volkswagen revealed some gray areas in EU rules that vehicle manufacturers were able to exploit to achieve lower exhaust emission scores in tests than are possible in normal driving conditions. In the Volkswagen "Dieselgate" scandal, the German car giant was found by U.S. testers in 2015 to be using an illegal defeat device in some diesel models to achieve artificially low scores for emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx).