Air pollution: reduction of CO₂ emissions from passengers cars, Community strategy

The Community's strategy to reduce CO2 emissions from passenger cars and improve fuel economy was endorsed by the Council in 1996. It aims to achieve an average specific CO2 emissions figure for new passenger cars of 120 gCO2/km by 2005, and 2010 at the latest. The starting point for the monitoring of the strategy was 1995. The Commission invited the Commission to report about the effectiveness of the strategy regularly. The first report for the reporting period 1995-1999 mainly covered the progress made with regard to the commitments of the automobile industry. This second report also addresses the other parts of the strategy in more detail, including requirements laid down in Directive 1999/94/EC (the so-called "Labelling" Directive) and Decision 1753/2000/EC (the so-called "Monitoring" Decision) concerning reporting requirements. The Commission believes that consolidated reporting will allow all interested parties to follow the implementation of the Community strategy in the most efficient way. In the conclusion of this report, it is stated that the implementation of the Community's strategy to reduce CO2 emissions from passenger cars and improve fuel economy shows generally good progress. The commitments of the car industry are in the implementation phase. The report highlights that the ACEA and JAMA have made significant progress. In fact ACEA had already achieved the upper limit of the 2003 indicative intermediate target range by the year 2000. On the other hand, KAMA must increase its efforts significantly. For its part, KAMA has reported that it will step up efforts and that it is confident about meeting its commitments. In order to meet the final target of 140 gCO2/km all three associations have to maintain or increase their efforts, in particular KAMA. To achieve the Community strategy target of 120 gCO2/km it is important that the Community continues its work on fiscal measures. Commission's communication on vehicle taxation scheduled for February 2002 will present, inter alia, options for the design of fuel-efficiency related vehicle taxation schemes. A number of Member States are lagging behind schedule with regard to the implementation of Directive 1999/94 and Decision 1753/2000. It is imperative that Member States accelerate the implementation of these legal provisions in order to avoid negative repercussions on the implementation of the strategy and its monitoring. �