EU Car Emissions Agreement Stalls

• 

  Your Email: *

  Your Name: *

  Send To: *

  Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.

  You are going to email the following: EU Car Emissions Agreement Stalls

  Message Subject: (Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from GreenBiz.com®

  Message Body: (Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from GreenBiz.com®.

  Your Personal Message: *

  CAPTCHA

  Are you human? Thanks for helping us block auto-spammers.

  

  What code is in the image?: *

  Copy the characters (respecting upper/lower case) from the image.
  
• 
• 
• 

BRUSSELS, BE -- New vehicle emissions rules for the European Union stalled after the governments couldn't agree on penalties for carmakers who miss their CO2 targets.

Envoys of the 27 EU member states appeared to agree in principle on cutting emissions by roughly 18 percent for partial fleets in 2012 and and reaching full compliance by 2015. The bloc's overarching goal involves cutting CO2 emissions to 95 grams per kilometer by 2020.

But the talks stalled on the issue of penalties for non-conforming manufacturers, AFP reported. At issue is how to balance the EU’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change at a time when the car industry is getting hammered by the global economic crisis.

Any package that moves forward must be approved by the governments and European Parliament, where there are varying views on the degree to which industry must reduce emissions or the amount it must pay for missing targets. The Italians, for example, want to keep penalties low but others argued low fines would be an ineffective deterrent.

"But if you make them too low they just become a car tax on consumers, as manufacturers push the costs onto them, rather than an incentive to create greener cars," a source told AFP.

The talks are scheduled to continue in early December.

Share: LinkedIn   StumbleUpon   Digg