The European Commission is planning to come up with a proposal to render the national type approval system for new cars more independent. The EPP Group welcomes the move. "This is a positive signal from the Commission. It was a humiliating experience for the EU to only learn through a US authority that a European manufacturer had dodged the emission limits. It is a very worthwhile initiative to put in place a new scheme to remedy the current weakness of the EU system", said Peter Liese MEP, who is the EPP Group's Environment and Health Spokesman.

In a letter to Peter Liese, European Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska announced a legislative proposal for better market surveillance of the national approval of new cars. The Commission is supposed to have an oversight of the national authorities. Besides this, the national bodies will have the right to control one another. The purpose is to arrive at a common registration and enforce standards in practice. In addition, the close economic ties between the authorities and the manufacturers are foreseen to be uncovered.

The Commission's move is a reaction to the vote of the European Parliament's Environment and Health Committee in December, where it rejected a proposal on the so-called Real Driving Emissions (RDE) on the grounds that it was not ambitious enough. RDE are supposed to better reflect car emissions on the road rather than under test-bench conditions. "If Parliament rejected the RDE proposal as a whole, we would be left with nothing more than the test-bench limits which have proven so annoyingly artificial. The Commission proposals can be a helpful tool for an overall compromise including the final adoption of the RDE standards", said Liese.