Clean air advocates and anti-climate change groups have been left fuming after EU lawmakers agreed to water down planned Euro 7 emissions regulations. The European Parliament voted to back a revised version of the new rules that means car tailpipe emissions will effectively be unchanged from the current Euro 6 regs.
A total of 329 MEPs voted in favor of the tweaked proposals, while only 230 were against and 41 abstained. The next stage is for talks to begin with the individual governments of each member state before the amended plan is written into law.
That’s great news for automakers, many of whom were vocally opposed to the original Euro 7 rules, claiming they would require cars to be fitted with expensive equipment that could add thousands of euros to the price of new vehicle, potentially killing off the market for small cars, while also slowing down progress towards the bigger goal of transitioning to EVs.
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The manual transmission option in the European Golf GTI has already been dropped in anticipation of the new rules, which were initially due to come into force in 2025 – hopefully VW will revisit that decision now that it has concrete assurance that the Euro 7 plans have been axed.
But despite being weaker, and now not likely to come into force until 2026 for passenger cars anyway, the new rules aren’t a total washout. MEPs decided that the emissions limits for buses and heavy trucks would still need to be tightened, and have agreed to shine the spotlight on tire and brake particle emissions from cars. The focus on these kinds of emissions will only grow in future when EVs become more commonplace because electric cars tend to be heavier than combustion vehicles and so are harder on their brakes and tires.