Air pollution: scheme to monitor the average emissions of carbon dioxide CO₂ from new passenger cars

The Conciliation Committee reached agreement on a joint text on the Council's common position incorporating, with slight changes, Parliament's amendments concerning the reference to a reduction in the level of greenhouse gas concentrations, studies on the measuring of emissions from motor vehicles and trailers and the possible need for a legal framework for the agreements to be entered into in the future with car manufacturers' organisations, including the measures to be taken in the event that such agreements failed to work. The text finally agreed on also laid down that the data collected under the monitoring scheme from 2003 would serve as the basis for monitoring voluntary obligations to reduce emissions of CO2 from motor vehicles agreed between the Commission and the automobile industry. The only amendment which the Council did not agree to include in the joint text concerned vehicle dimensions among the data to be collected and transmitted by the Member States under Annex I to the decision. However, that annex included numerous other data representing a significant body of information, and vehicle size was not therefore a determining factor. Parliament's delegation to the Conciliation Committee therefore felt that the final outcome of conciliation was highly satisfactory, as the vast majority of its amendments had been incorporated in the joint text. It therefore recommended that the joint text be approved at third reading.�