Publication details
EU harmonisation of light vehicle’s emissions
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| Citation | |
| Description | Automotive industry plays important role in the Single Market. Legislation in this industry is to the large extent harmonised or one could even say unified. Harmonisation in this sector promotes better development of the Single Market. Part of this legislation is related to protection of environment and especially to air and climate. Even though the European Union introduces stricter harmonised legislation regarding light vehicle’s emissions, local air quality is stagnating or worsening. Vehicles are directly and indirectly responsible for this situation. Some of the European states (e.g. Germany) are banning diesel vehicles from entering cities or part of cities. In the near future some of the European cities will ban all vehicles with combustion engines from entering city centres. In order to identify core problems and successfully combat air pollution we need to focus on vehicles and their exhaust fumes. Legislation connected to air pollution and climate is closely linked to type approval procedure of new vehicles. This procedure is harmonised throughout the whole EU and consists of several procedures in which particularly polluting substances and GHG emissions from exhaust fumes and noise emissions are measured. However legislation in the automotive sector is vast and covers many various topics. This paper focuses only on small part regarding harmonised legislation and that is protection of environment. Aim of this paper is to evaluate whether EU harmonized type approval legislation which regulates technical standards for light vehicles and their exhaust emissions can be regarded as more harmonised or as more unified. Each legislative technique might result in different consequences. Another part will assess whether this harmonisation or unification is necessary at all. The last part of this paper will analyse whether the harmonisation or unification of this legislation is systematic or only partial. That means whether technical legislation and standards are in their entirety subject to harmonisation or unification without any possibility for member states to amend them or whether there is a certain room for creating national legislation. |