Air pollution: emissions from small park ignition engines, non-road mobile machinery

The European Parliament voted to endorse the report by Mr Bernd LANGE (PES, D). (Please refer to the previous text). In addition, to get the Directive through Parliament in one reading, Parliament passed a series of amendments negotiated as a compromise deal with Council by Mr LANGE. One, which was passed by 19 votes (266 to 247), exempts chainsaws from the Directive. Other set an 18-month deadline for transposal of the Directive in the Member States and define small-volume manufacturers as producing less than 25,000 units a year. Under this compromise deal, Parliament has also classed generators, pumps and the engines used to power snow-throwers as 'hand-held' to give them more generous limit values and slightly longer compliance deadlines. It wants Members States to be able to give manufacturers 'economic' incentives, offsetting the costs of compliance, to meet the Stage II limits early and to allow producers to use labelling to indicate that equipment meets the limit values early. It also wants the Commission to assess whether it is impossible for certain mobile machines to comply with the Stage II limits by the deadlines set and grant derogations for them if necessary.�