Colour, chrome and curves

Driving forward legislation

European Union policy interacts with the car industry in various ways – some of them contradictory.

The EU has passed successive waves of legislation to oblige vehicle manufacturers to improve their environmental performance. The European emissions standards seek to control pollution from particulates from cars and vans. After the failure of a voluntary agreement, the EU resorted to legislation, agreed at the end of 2008 and adopted in April 2009, to reduce the average carbon dioxide emissions from fleets of new cars. To assist towards the same goal, the fuel quality directive agreed at the same time imposed obligations on the fuel industry to reduce carbon emissions. The renewables directive looks to give a boost to the use of biofuels in transport.

In the summer of 2009, when José Manuel Barroso was seeking a second mandate as president of the European Commission, he declared that a main goal of his second administration would be the decarbonisation of transport by 2050 – implying a significant shift towards low emissions technology on the roads. Meanwhile, the Commission's environment department is looking at how transport can do its fair share to help the EU meet an objective of reducing emissions by at least 80%, compared to 1990 levels, by 2050.

But the EU is doing more than trying to improve the fuel performance of cars with traditional hydrocarbon engines. For many years it has also been putting money into research on new technologies such as hydrogen-powered and electric cars.

The EU's European recovery programme includes a €16 billion budget for research on green cars and €4bn in loans from the European Investment Bank. The aim is to promote demand for green cars.

But the economic crisis has also seen the EU and its member states spending millions on propping up their car industries with forms of state aid. The primary concern has been to save manufacturing jobs much more than to worry about whether the car firms that are being saved are makers of low-emission vehicles. In this respect it has been in line with the CARS-21 initiative, launched in Barroso's first administration, which sought to secure the long-term future of Europe's car industry as globally competitive. The underlying assumption has been that the car industry is economically important and must be preserved, even if its products are environmentally damaging.

What the next Barroso administration would like to do is promote demand for green cars to such an extent that economic growth can be founded on environmental improvements.