Air pollution: CO₂ emissions, fuel consumption of N1 light commercial vehicles (amend. Directives 70/156/EEC and 80/1268/EEC)

The Common Position, broadly in line with the Commission proposal, has been unanimously adopted by the Council. The main changes to the Commission proposal were the introduction of a vehicle family concept and the changes to the dates of transposition and of entry into force of this Directive. The Council has: - completed Article 1 : an Article 1 (b) has been added on the information on CO2 emissions/fuel consumption of N1 vehicles to be mentioned in the EC Certificate of Conformity; - created 2 new Articles (Art. 3 and 4), introducing namely the concept of "vehicle family" : This new Article requests the Commission, not later than two years after the entry into force of this Directive, to: a) present a study on the possibilities to obtain representative CO2 emissions and fuel consumption data for completed multi-stage vehicles and vehicles whose emissions are measured according to Directive 88/77/EEC in order to take into account the "cost-efficiency" aspects of these measurements; b) present an evaluation of the vehicle family concept introduced in this Directive; c) if appropriate, present draft measures on the adaptation of this Directive to technical progress to the Committee established by Art. 13 of Directive 70/156/EEC. Moreover, the new Article 4 is the consequence of the adoption of an EP amendment and stipulates that, where a vehicle produced by a specialist coach builder falls within the criteria of one of the families of vehicles of the manufacturer of the base vehicle, the coach builder may use the data on fuel efficiency and CO2 production supplied by that manufacturer; - postponed various dates of entry into force : the Council has pushed-back the application of this Directive for new type approvals and for all types of class II and III vehicles by one year and has also postponed the application of the Directive to multi-stage vehicles; - provide that Member States shall transpose the Directive 12 months after the entry into force of this Directive; - included the common definitions for the three weight classes of N1 vehicles; - introduced 2 new paragraphs in the Annex concerning the modification of Annex I of Directive 80/1268/EC (extension of type-approval, the approval of vehicle of category N1 within a family); - introduced in the Annex a modification of Annex II of Directive 80/1268/EEC.�