The European Parliament has adopted, by a large majority, the political agreement reached last April between the Parliament and the Dutch Presidency on the new Regulation on requirements relating to emission limits and type-approval for internal combustion engines for non-road mobile machinery (NRMM).

The health and safety of EU citizens was a key element in this proposal, especially for people who work every day with machines and are particularly exposed to pollutant emissions: “We succeeded in striking the right balance here. We have tightened the limits proposed by the European Commission even further for many power ranges, but we have kept the approach reasonable enough so that the industry can comply within a short period”, said the European Parliament Rapporteur Elisabetta Gardini MEP.

“The Regulation is very ambitious in terms of environmental protection and public health protection because NRMM engines account for about 15% of all NOx and 5% of particulate emissions in the EU”, she added.

The new non-road mobile machinery Regulation will cover all kinds of combustion engines installed in machines ranging from small hand-held equipment, construction machinery (like cranes), generating sets, railcars and locomotives and inland waterway vessels to harvesting and agricultural machinery (like narrow tractors). The engines covered in the scope shall meet the same requirements regardless of their fuels so as to boost innovation in the engine sector. A new in-service monitoring system has been set up to assess the engines' performance in real life which will fill the gap between engine laboratory testing and real world emissions.

“The agreement also allows some more time for small and medium-sized companies to cope with the new requirements. This is in line with the ‘Think Small First’ principle, which has guided EU institutional work for years”, she concluded.