Car lobby wrecking EU emissions law, NGO says PDF Print E-mail
Lobbying

EUobserver.com, Leigh Phillips, 27/5/2008

Environmental NGO Greenpeace has accused the European car industry lobby of watering down vital emissions legislation in a report out Monday (26 May), with six activists dressed as cavemen arrested in Brussels in a publicity campaign.

The protestors, who did not have a Belgian permit, drove a stone age-type car as seen in the 1960s cartoon The Flintstones to the European Parliament building, where they delivered a stone tablet with the logos of German car firms Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes - the "dinosaurs" of the pro-industry lobby.



"The car industry, led by the Germans, has misled and manipulated the EU for 17 years. We have reached the point where the car industry is endangering the EU's ability to meet its obligations under the Kyoto treaty," Greenpeace campaigner Agnes de Rooij said.

The NGO's report accuses the car industry of employing a classic public relations strategy – the "3-D" technique: deny there is a problem, delay any regulatory action and, once regulation can no longer be delayed, dominate the policy response.

The document claims that the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) in the 1990s denied the need for EU legislation and in 1998 put forward voluntary targets of cutting CO2 by 10 percent instead, but later failed to meet the self-imposed regime.

When in 1995 the European Commission brought out its own targets for average car emissions to be met by 2005, ACEA worked successfully to delay the date first until 2010, then until 2012 and is now pushing for 2015, Greenpeace writes.

The report also says ACEA has dominated the legislative process in Brussels, all but accusing German industry commissioner Gunter Verheugen of acting on the car lobby's behalf.

When the commission set up a high-level working group, CARS 21, to look at the future of the industry, seven seats were given to car makers and just one to a pro-environmental NGO. Two of the MEPs on the panel, Malcolm Harbour and Garrelt Duin, were both chairmen of the Forum for the Automobile and Society, a pro-motoring group, at the time.

CARS 21 led the commission to dilute its original emissions target of 120g CO2/km to 130g, with the remaining 10g to be made up by other measures. It also based the average on car fleets not individual models, helping manufacturers to keep making heavy gas-guzzling cars so long as they sold some smaller, cleaner vehicles as well.

Battle lines
MEPs on Tuesday will meet to debate proposed new fuel efficiency laws ahead of a final decision on EU car emissions laws in autumn, with the battle lines already being drawn up.

"The report is a partial diatribe against the industry and misses the colossal changes in industry product lines, which take an enormous amount of money and aren't going to come from the public purse," the British conservative MEP, Malcolm Harbour, said.

ACEA's spokeswoman, Sigrid de Vries, accused Greenpeace of "grossly over-simplifying" the situation and trying to "discredit" the manufacturing sector. "There has not been any such nefarious [3-D] lobbying strategy. We're simply too busy developing new technologies to reduce CO2 emissions to come up with anything like that."

"The automobile industry has been entirely transparent throughout the process. There are two possible ways of developing regulation in this area: going over the heads of industry and imposing something on them they might resist, or working with the industry to develop regulation together. This is a much more sensible approach," she said.

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