Written questions to Mr Erkki Liikanen

Transcription

1 A Committee of Inquiry into Emission Measurements in the Automotive Sector Written questions to Mr Erkki Liikanen No Did you had, at any time before the emissions-cheating scandal, any suspicions that some manufacturers were deploying strategies to emissions-testing system? beat the 1 We in the Commission had no evidence of concrete cases of wrongdoings by any manufacturer and I had no reason to suspect specific car manufacturers of deploying strategies to beat the emissions testing system. In the 1990s while you were Member of the College of the Santer and Prodi Commission, the US Environmental Protection Agency fined several heavy truck producers, which evaded testing using a defeat device integrated in the Engine Control Unit (ECU) by shutting down emissions controls during highway driving while appearing to be in compliance during emission tests. 2 Has the Commission been informed by the EPA about this case and has there been any sort of cooperation between the Commission and the EPA? Was this fraud used as an opportunity by the Santer and Prodi Commission to start investigations on a possible use of defeat devices in cars and/or trucks in the European market? The US scandal on the use of defeat devices on several Heavy Duty Vehicles was known to the Commission. As a consequence of that scandal the Commission immediately prepared an amendment to Directive 88/77/EC on emissions from Heavy Duty Vehicles (HDVs) introducing definitions and limitations of Defeat Device and Auxiliary Control Device (Commission Directive 2001/27/EC). For the Light Duty sector the concept and prohibition of defeat device was introduced already in Directive 98/69/EC (Euro 3 and 4) and was further confirmed in Regulation (EC) No 715/2007. However, direct suspicions regarding concrete cases were never raised in Europe. 1

2 Do you see any shortcomings of the Member States with regard to market surveillance and the type approval procedure? If so please specify those shortcomings? Did you, at your tenure as Commissioner, call on the European Commission or any other EU institution or other Member States, as a matter of urgency and of high importance, to address the issue of NOx emissions that were multiples of the legal limits? I can only refer to the situation during my mandate as the Commissioner for Enterprise and Information Society (September 1999 July 2004). 3 From an historical standpoint, the type-approval framework has been subject to continuous change: from the first legal framework adopted in 1970s for approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to the type-approval of motor vehicles and their trailers (Council Directive 70/156/EEC) to the introduction of mandatory Community type-approval for all passenger cars as from January 1998 onwards (Council Directive 92/53/EEC). However, weaknesses in the market surveillance systems and the type approval procedures of Member States were only identified in the context of the work of the CARS 2020 High Level Group (Commission Communication of 2012 on CARS 2020). I left the Commission in July As regards NOx emissions, at that time the available data was very limited and insufficient for any quantitative assessment of the gap between NEDC and real driving emissions. On-road testing of HDVs with PEMS started at the JRC in 2004, following a request from my services (DG ENTR), with the clear aim to develop a regulatory in-use test procedure. However, PEMS equipment capable of ensuring reliable on-road testing of LDVs was not yet available and, thus, the on-road testing of LDVs could start after I had left the Commission (in 2007 for research and exploratory purposes only). 4 The Commission s Joint Research Centre (JRC) have told this committee that they were aware of the possible use of defeat devices as far back as 1998 (when the US-EPA accused several US heavy-duty vehicle manufacturers of violating the Clean Air Act by installing illegal defeat). Were these suspicions ever communicated during your time as Commissioner and were they ever followed up? Did the aforementioned case in the U.S. - in the resulting settlement with the EPA, the guilty manufacturers received heavy fines and were subjected to new emissions standards which included onroad testing - inform the work on the Euro 5/6 regulation and the provisions on defeat devices? As I already explained in the reply to Question 2 above, instances of defeat devices in the USA in the nineties have influenced the Commission and we did act upon them. The provision related to defeat devices and their ban in the EU legislation was inspired by the US legislation and confirmed in the Euro 5/6 proposal. 5 According to the JRC, the risk that NOx emissions of diesel vehicles would be significantly higher outside the regulatory test cycle was known to the European Commission as well as to a wider audience of stakeholders and based on laboratory tests with alternative driving cycles when the 2

3 Euro 5/6 Regulation 715/2007 was drafted. What actions did you take personally to address this problem? Were there any plans to address the issue in the Euro 5/6 Regulation 715/2007? The drafting of the Euro 5/6 proposal had just started towards the end of my mandate in the Commission and it was finalised at the end of 2005 under the following Commission. Having said that, I would like to stress that this proposal was drafted on the basis of a detailed impact assessment and technical analysis and with the goal to tackle as soon as possible the most urgent air quality problem at that time Particulate Matter (PM). The New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) was the laboratory test applied in the European countries and it was proposed to be kept as the only procedure to assess pollutant emission because waiting for the development of a new test cycle would have significantly delayed the introduction of the Euro 5/6 limits and the reduction of PM emissions. To my knowledge, the NEDC test procedure, in combination with the Euro 5/6 limits, has been effective in forcing the deployment of the Diesel Particulate Filters (DPF) on all diesel vehicles and as a consequence PM emissions have been effectively reduced. Concerning NOx emissions, our ambition was the test cycle to be revised subsequently to the adoption of Euro 5/6 standards (this was later on reflected in the provision of Article 14(3) of Regulation (EC) 715/2007 which calls for a review of the procedures, tests and requirements referred to in Article 5(3) as well as the test cycles used to measure emissions). This approach was confirmed by the co-legislators (the European Parliament and the Council) with the adoption of Regulation (EC) 715/2007 on 20 June Following investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1998, seven large engine manufacturers were caused to pay at that time recordbreaking $1-billion settlement for having designed engine software with "defeat devices" that illegally bypassed emission control equipment. As European Commissioner for Enterprise & Information Society from 1999 to 2004, what concrete steps did you take so that you prevent European manufacturers from using defeat devices and therefore repeating a similar scandal as 1998 in the USA? The European Commission implemented the prohibition of defeat devices in European legislation for Light Duty Vehicles and Heavy Duty Vehicles respectively via Directive 98/69/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 October 1998 and Commission Directive 2001/27/EC of 10 April From then on, "defeat devices" were banned under EU law and this ban must be respected by all car manufacturers. When were you first aware of; firstly the discrepancy between NOx emissions registered in the NEDC type approval test and emitted by vehicles in the real world? And secondly the possible use of defeat devices - the application of different strategies during the type approval test and in real driving conditions - by car manufacturers? What action did you take to address these issues and when? What progress was made to rectify these issues during your time in office? Who did you inform about these issues and what was their reactions? When has a Member State or 3

4 the Commission asked for these issue to be discussed at European level for the first time and which one? As stated by the European Environmental Agency (EEA) 1, by the mid-2000s, there was increasing evidence that, for various reasons, standardised test cycles used for the type-approval of Euro 3 vehicles did not always represent real-world driving emissions. Thus, the Commission was made aware of the discrepancy between NOx emissions registered in the NEDC test and those emitted by vehicles in the real world in the context of preparation of the Commission proposal for Euro 5/6 during my mandate as a Commissioner. However, the perception at that time was that the main problem was the test procedure, not individual malpractice. Higher emissions in the real world were seen as a consequence of the fact that the laboratory-based test (NEDC) failed to include many relevant real-world driving situations (e.g. high engine speed and high engine load). In 2004, my services requested the JRC to start on-road testing of HDVs with the view to develop a regulatory in-use test procedure based on PEMS testing. In addition, the Commission proposal for setting Euro 5/6 standards was developed as one of the measures that came out of the Clean Air For Europe Programme. CAFE programme started in 2001 and has resulted in the Thematic Strategy on air pollution in The Strategy established interim objectives for air pollution in the EU and proposed appropriate measures in all sectors. For land transport, it demonstrated the need for further emission standards (such as Euro 5) as well as further tightening of emission standards for trucks. Stakeholders (including local and national governments, scientific organisations, NGOs and car industry) had ample opportunities to contribute to the preparatory work. The possibility for manufacturers to use defeat devices to reduce the effectiveness of vehicles' emission control systems has been known since 1998 when it was explicitly prohibited in EU law. As I already stated, direct suspicions regarding concrete cases were not raised in Europe. 8 Were there any plans to include in the Euro 5/6 Regulation 715/2007, for which you were responsible towards the end of your mandate, any provisions requiring vehicle manufacturers to disclose information on and justify the use of any devices that reduce the effectiveness of the emission control system, as is required by the U.S. EPA? The preparation of the Euro 5/6 proposal was in its very initial drafting phase towards the end of my mandate in the Commission (the Commission adopted the Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on type approval of motor vehicles with respect to emissions and on access to vehicle repair information COM(2005)683 final on 21 December 2005). I was not involved, nor am I aware of any discussions on 1 See their reply to Question 1 for the EMIS hearing of 24 May COM(2005)

5 such provisions taking place at that time. Ever since the 1970 s emissions of vehicles has been an issue. In Euro 3 directive the specific NOx emission limits were introduced. How compliance with the Euro 3 directive emission limits thought to be ensured? What was the industry s response to the NOx emission limits? was the 9 Although specific emission limits for NOx were only introduced in the EU legislation with Euro 3, NOx emissions were indirectly limited also beforehand, since the emission limits for Euro 1 and Euro 2 were applied to the sum of hydrocarbon (HC) and NOx. The reason for this approach was that originally it was thought that unburned hydrocarbons and NOx shared equal responsibility with respect to ground-level ozone formation. Later, it became evident that the 3-way catalysts were taking good care of HC emissions and thus the attention shifted toward NOx. Regarding the compliance with Euro 3 NOx emission limits, the legislation prescribed the normal ex-ante control (i.e. emission testing at type-approval) coupled with the ex-post verification (i.e. In Service Compliance and Conformity of Production provisions), all based on laboratory test checks (i.e. NEDC). According the answer of Commissioner Liikanen to the EP written questions of February 2003 (1) and as also described by the Commission to the UNECE 44thGRPE meeting of June 2002 (2),the problem of use of «defeat devices» and cycle beating, or use of so- called irrational emission control strategies, was well known to the Commission. It appears that in 2000, after discrepancies between laboratory emission test (ESC cycle) and real driving test (ETC test) on some EURO3 Heavy Duty Vehicles were found, presence of defeat devices were immediately suspected. Consequently the Commission undertook further investigations and within a year (April 2001) it introduced additional requirements in the law 10 Directive 2001/27/EC (3) on heavy duty vehicles (and similarly also in Directive 2002/51/EC on motorcycles (4) ) to provide disincentives to the use of defeat devices including: a definition irrational emission control strategies ; mandatory disclosure to type approval authorities of electronic strategies justifying certain manipulations such as engine protection and cold starting; provisions for type approval authorities or technical services to require additional NOx screening test. Why did in 2000 the Commission deduct that discrepancies were due most probably to the presence of defeat devices? What type of additional investigations did the Commission pursue once discrepancies in the EURO3 HD vehicles were found? Why were concrete requirements (such as mandatory disclosure and provisions for additional testing) for addressing the problem of «Irregular emission control strategies» defined and included in Directives 2001/27/EC on Heavy Duty Vehicles and 2002/51/EC on Motorcycles, not explicitly also included in the requirements for Light-Duty Vehicles? Wouldn t the use of those irrational strategies or defeat devices extremely likely to exist and in use also for cars, as for trucks 5

6 and motorcycles? The basic provisions on defeat devices (definition and prohibition) are largely the same for HDVs and LDVs. However, following the US scandal in 1998, more specific provisions were introduced in the legislation for HDVs. This did not lead to an immediate intervention also on the LDV sector, because the prohibition of the defeat devices already existed in the EU legislation, while there was no such provision with respect to the HDVs. To my knowledge, the concept of an "irrational emission control strategy" for HDV was later on dropped in 2009 and replaced by (prohibited) "defeat devices". At the time of drafting the Euro 5/6 proposal, there was no evidence that manufacturers of LDVs had applied forbidden defeat devices. The appropriateness of the legal prohibition of defeat devices under Euro 3/4 legislation (Directive 98/69/EC) was never questioned by any stakeholder. Since the prohibition of defeat devices in EU legislation was viewed as a sufficient deterrent to prevent illegal behaviour of LDV producers at the time, the same provision was proposed to be carried over into the Euro 5/6 proposal. 11 (1) WRITTEN QUESTION E-0460/03 by Bernd Lange (PSE) to the Commission (2) Current and Future European Community Emission Requirements (informal document n6 44th GRPE, June 2002 agenda item 4.4 and 5. Page 10) (3) (4) Have you ever been alerted by the co-legislators, i.e. the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, or by single Member States defeat devices and/or defeat strategies by car manufacturers? In this regard, have you ever been requested by the co-legislators to investigate the issue of defeat devices and/or defeat strategies by car manufacturers? If so, please provide detailed information and lists of the relevant requests, including any written and/or oral questions by Members of the Parliament, parliamentary resolutions, letters received by responsible national Ministers or Council Presidencies. Do you see any shortcomings of the Member states with regard to market surveillance and the type approval procedure? If so, please specify those shortcomings? about No, I was never alerted by the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers, nor by any Member State about defeat devices and/or defeat strategies by car manufacturers and none of them ever requested me to investigate the issue of defeat devices and/or defeat strategies by car manufacturers. 6

7 12 From your perspective as former Commissioner being familiar with the internal processes and procedures in the Commission: Why did it take the Commission almost 10 years to develop a new RDE test? I would not comment on the process of development of the new RDE test itself as it took place after I left the Commission in July However, on the basis of the available information, the time frame for the development of the RDE test for LDVs seems, from my perspective, comparable to the time frame for the development of other equally complex test procedure, such as the PEMS testing for HDVs Do you consider to have fulfilled, as a former Commissioner, your obligation of loyal cooperation with the inquiry committee (EMIS) of the European Parliament? Yes I do. 3 See the reply of JRC to Question 1b for the EMIS hearing on 19 April