A 000130 04.01.2017

Committee of Inquiry into Emission Measurements in the Automotive Sector

Written questions to Mr. Viktor Stromček - Deputy Minister for Transport and Construction ,

No. Question 1. What level of priority is given to the emission scandal and the on-going type-approval reform by Slovakia as the Member State currently holding the EU rotating presidency?

The investigation into the emission scandal is important for the Slovak Republic. This affair is being actively monitored even though the Slovak Republic has not started its own investigation yet. The Ministry of Transport and Construction (hereinafter “the Ministry”), as the type-approval authority, is in contact with the importers of the offending vehicle models, namely VW, ŠKODA, SEAT and , and is assessing the number of vehicles which have been recalled for corrective servicing. Type-approval reform is envisaged in a draft regulation to cover type-approval of motor vehicles and of their trailers, systems, components and separate technical units for these vehicles, and for market surveillance of these vehicles. The draft regulation introduces no new type-approval processes, but instead new procedures related to independent technical services and market surveillance. Likewise, it introduces new tools and processes to cover cases such as the aforementioned emission scandal. The Slovak Republic supports type-approval reform. However, not all aspects of the new draft regulation proposed by the European Union would bring the desired effect. Rather it would cause an additional administrative burden. We believe that cases such as the emission scandal should be prevented at the earliest stages, as such prior to granting type-approval, for example through a better vehicle testing methodology, and not retrospectively after vehicles, which have failed to meet established requirements, have already either appeared in the market or been sold to customers and registered.

2. During the Slovak presidency what are your plans in relations to the emission scandal?

Texts that would apply to vehicle admissions do not figure in the agendas of working groups chaired by the Ministry which are involved in vehicle approval. However, the Slovak Republic has been prepared to provide assistance at the request of either the Member States or the European Commission, for example as a mediator in joint negotiations aimed toward finding a solution to the scandal.

3. How do you ensure that the emissions of the cars produced in the Slovak Republic are in line with the EC-type approvals (Conformity of production)? What adaptations, if any, would you envisage when the Slovak authorities become responsible for market surveillance in relation to the cars on their territory as envisaged by the proposals on the reform of the type-approval framework?

Vehicle manufacturers are solely responsible for the emissions produced by their vehicles in road traffic to be in compliance with EC type- approvals. No legislation guarantees such an obligation for Member States. All vehicles registered in the Slovak Republic have to be subjected to emission controls within a prescribed period. This is a statutory obligation imposed upon vehicle operators where, in the event of a violation, the operator of the vehicle will be sanctioned. The Slovak Trade Inspection, a budgetary organisation within the Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic, is responsible for market surveillance in the Slovak Republic. The Ministry is also currently assisting the Slovak Trade Inspection in the development of a control methodology and directly in inspections. Adjustments which need to be made in this area include an increase in staff and a budget able to cover market surveillance obligations. This is going to be clearly necessary after the adoption of the regulation on type- approval of motor vehicles and of their trailers, systems, components and separate technical units, and on market surveillance of these vehicles, as the current Directive 2007/46/EC does not provide for market surveillance.

4. According to Article 4(2) of the Regulation EC 715/2007 durability testing for a light-duty vehicle's pollution control devices shall cover 160,000 km. Have Slovak authorities ever checked whether the long term durability of the emission control systems of in-use vehicles is guaranteed? If so what were the results and can you share them with the EMIS committee?

Article 4 of Regulation (EC) 715/2007 establishes obligations for manufacturers in relation to type-approval and to procedures for verifying conformity of production, durability of pollution control devices and in-service conformity. The Slovak Republic has not granted EC type-approvals under Regulation (EC) 715/2007, so it is not carrying out such tests and inspections. The EC Regulation does not oblige Member States to verify the long-term durability of systems to regulate the emissions of vehicles operating in the territory of a Member State and which are registered.

5. In your responses to the questionnaire send on behalf of EMIS committee to the Member States’ authorities you repeatedly deny any government responsibility for cars driven on Slovak roads claiming that you did not grant any EC-type approval. However, there are several obligations in the Regulation 715/2007 and Directive 46/2007 requiring the Member States to monitor the car fleet in their country and report any findings of non-conformity with the type-approved type to the Member State which granted the EC type-approval to verify that vehicle. Do you have a proper market surveillance system in place that allows you to monitor the performance of vehicles in your country?

Permit us to revise that statement. The Slovak Republic denied responsibility in the questionnaires for either the emission scandal or verification of conformity of vehicles manufactured by because the Slovak Republic has not granted for VW, ŠKODA, SEAT and AUDI models either EC type-approval of the entire vehicle pursuant to Directive 2007/46/EC or EC type-approval pursuant to Regulation (EC) 715/2007. The Slovak Republic had stated that it does not grant EC type-approvals pursuant to Regulation (EC) 715/2007 nor for other manufacturers, but grants EC type-approvals for entire vehicles under Directive 2007/46/EC. To cover in-service monitoring of vehicles, the Slovak Republic has introduced a system of regular motor vehicle technical inspections and emission controls. These inspections can detect any un-roadworthiness or noncompliance in a vehicle in service. Because this involves the registration of vehicles which could be later modified after they have been registered, it is not possible to verify the conformity of such vehicles to EC type-approval. In addition, neither Regulation (EC) 715/2007 nor Directive 2007/46/EC has exhaustively set out an obligation by the Member States to verify vehicles in service, and there are only stated procedures which should be applied if the Member State finds that a vehicle, system,

component or separate technical unit is not in conformity with type-approval. With respect to the aforementioned VW, ŠKODA, SEAT and AUDI models, these procedures are progressively accepting type-approval authorities which grant EC type-approval for the entire vehicle.

6. In the aftermath of the Volkswagen scandal several Member States launched investigations to verify whether the cars sold on their market are affected by the defeat device in question. Slovakia has not started any investigation despite the fact that it has a large Volkswagen plant which is one of the country's biggest private sector exporters, investors and employers. Could you please tell why there is no interest in Slovakia to perform checks on the cars used on Slovakian roads if there is a suspicion that those vehicles are the ones affected?

The Volkswagen plant in the Slovak Republic is only the manufacturer’s production plant. It has no connection with the Ministry as the type- approval authority because the Slovak Republic does not grant any one EC type approval for vehicle models manufactured at the production plant. The Slovak Republic has not started an investigation because the individual VW vehicle models have already been tested by other Member States. The European Commission presented guidance during the investigation for Member States not to meaninglessly repeat tests of specific vehicle types which have already been tested. In addition, the manufacturer did not deny the emission scandal. It said exactly which Member States and how many vehicles the scandal concerns. The Ministry is aware of the offending vehicles through representatives from the manufacturers – the importers of these vehicles.

7. If we compare the emission standards in the EU and the USA, they seem to give advantage to local producers and commonly used technologies. In the USA, European car manufacturers have to cope with ambitious NOx standards which factually eliminate broader usage of diesel powered cars on the US market. On the other hand, the EU seems to focus more on CO2 emissions, which leads to CO2 limits hardly reachable with big petrol engines broadly used in the USA. As Transport Minister of your country, can you imagine deepened mutual recognition and legislative coordination between the EU and the USA, with the aim to develop common technologically neutral emission limits and emission testing procedures?

As indicated, emission standards in the EU and the United States are different and reflect the willingness and ability to use a particular type of internal combustion engine in vehicles. This is closely linked to fuel prices, which are different in the EU and the United States. However, if the components of exhaust gases are defined as harmful, there is obviously a need to regulate their discharge into the atmosphere, regardless of whether it is NOx or CO2. Mutual recognition, for example of approvals concerning exhaust emissions, is seen as problematic because the testing methods are not the same and thereby aggravate deviations in laboratory testing results from real-driving conditions. Mutual recognition would be possible only after the development and acceptance of harmonised rules and methodologies for testing vehicle emissions, either under laboratory conditions or in real-driving conditions, which would be binding for both the EU and the United States.

8. How do you understand the purpose of the type approval procedure for vehicles? Does this procedure serve to verify the capacity of the vehicle to comply with the requirements for the use (on the road) or to comply with the laboratory test conditions under predefined cycle tests on bench whose nature does not correspond anymore to the real-driving conditions for many years? Would you say that the cars do not have to comply, regarding the purpose of EURO 5 / 6 Regulation, with the emission limits under real-driving conditions?

Type-approval of a vehicle should ensure that mass-produced vehicles comply with technical requirements established for road safety, vehicle occupants and other road users, and they do not pollute their surroundings and the environment. Type-approval should likewise be used for meeting administrative requirements to ensure vehicles conformity with the approved type and guarantee verification of conformance. Technical requirements are provided in individual regulatory acts, while establishing the methodology for testing and studies. Many of the technical requirements can be verified in the laboratory and the results of these tests reliably cover the use of a vehicle in real-driving conditions over its lifetime. However, what is problematic in the laboratory is the measurement of emissions and fuel consumption, where results deviate from emissions and fuel consumption under real-driving conditions. This is due, on the one hand, to the requirements for harmonised measurement as specified in the test cycle and for the comparison of the results from such measurement with established limiting values, while on the other hand real-driving conditions vary; in particular by the use of a vehicle for different purposes and in different geographical conditions as well as by the actual driver and his or her driving style. The idea of measuring emissions and fuel consumption in real-driving conditions, as determined by the methodology, would certainly contribute toward reducing these differences, although none can be expected to completely eliminate the problem, namely the deviations especially in regard to the aforementioned factors. Euro 5/6 limits should be observed in real-driving conditions. However, it is necessary also to consider a correction for real-driving conditions and the vehicle’s age.

9. The Study about the Legal Obligations relating to emission measurements in the EU automotive sector1 prepared EP Policy Department A at the request of the Committee of Inquiry into Emission Measurements in the Automotive Sector (EMIS) points to the fact there is a lack of consistency in the penalties at MS level in the EU and that the penalty provisions need to be further adjusted. Do you consider the enormous differences by the MS in setting the levels of the fines which may vary between up to €7 mil to only some few thousands € as one of the drivers of the current problem?

If the level of sanctions is not set and harmonised at the EU level, but the Member States are only obliged to introduce such sanctions into their legal systems, then it is clear that the amount of fines is going to vary. However, we do not believe that the extreme differences in motor vehicle emission fines somehow relate to the current problems regarding type-approval of vehicles and thus driving the Volkswagen emission scandal.

10. The investigation performed by German, UK, French and Italian authorities discovered that most vehicles tested had much higher NOx emissions on the NEDC cycles at hot start rather than at cold start. Such results would seem to point towards the presence of defeat devices or unlawful emission control strategies that render inactive or partially inactive the emission control system outside the scope of the test. Have you conducted similar tests to investigate type approved vehicles on the Slovak market, in order to enforce the ban on defeat devices in the Regulation 715/2007/EC?

1 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2016/578996/IPOL_STU(2016)578996_EN.pdf

As we have communicated to you in previous questionnaires, the Slovak Republic conducts no testing under Regulation (EC) 715/2007. No such defeat devices are going to be discovered in a single inspection because it concerns not a physical device installed in a vehicle, but instead sophisticated software encrypted in the vehicle’s electronic control unit, and there are several such control units in current vehicles. Even in the European Commission’s testing laboratory at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) would the discovery of such a “device” be time consuming, costly and challenging for staff. The Slovak Republic has no such technical service furnished with the equipment and accredited to measure emissions. Historically, it has no experience and expert knowledge in measuring emissions and approving them according to established methods. Therefore, we see no sense and especially no benefit, after the vehicle emission scandal broke and, moreover, where the Slovak Republic granted no EC type- approval, to suddenly start conducting testing, which would eventually have to deviate from the approved methodology, in order to detect any defeat devices.

11. Slovakia hosts production facilities of VW, PSA, KIA while Jaguar Land Rover production is expected to start by 2018. Where are those vehicles type approved? Can you explain whether there is any particular reason why they are not type approved in your country? Do you know whether those vehicles are being tested by an in-house technical service for getting the type approval? According to European Commission's “Report on the Member States investigation following the emission manipulation case”, some 46,000 vehicles in Slovakia were fitted with defeat devices (p.26 in the attached report). Where does this number come from considering you have not performed any investigations? Why knowing that a considerable number of diesel vehicles were illegal you still didn’t start any further investigation? With regard to the penalties into force in your country, do you think the circulating Euro5 and 6 diesel models could fall under the provision set up in the legal frame you referred to (i.e. Act 725/2004)? If not, why so?

Three manufacturers – Volkswagen AG based in Germany, PSA Peugeot Citroen based in France and KIA Motors based in the Republic of Korea – have located their production plants in the Slovak Republic. These ones manufacture the models below. These models have been granted EC type- approval for the entire vehicle by the following type-approval authorities: - KIA Žilina Production Plant: o KIA Ceed and KIA Venga – EC-type approval for the vehicle granted by approval authority e4 RDW Vehicle Technology and Information Centre, Netherlands o KIA Sportage – EC-type approval for the vehicle granted by type-approval authority e11 VCA – Vehicle Certification Agency, United Kingdom - PSA Peugeot Citroen Trnava Production Plant: o Peugeot 208 – EC-type approval for the vehicle granted by approval authority e2 Ministère de l'Environnement, de l'Énergie et de la mer, chargée des relations internationales sur le climat - Direction Générale de l’Énergie et du Climat, France o Citroen C3 Picasso – EC-type approval for the vehicle granted by approval authority e2 Ministère de l'Environnement, de l'Énergie et de la mer, chargée des relations internationales sur le climat - Direction Générale de l’Énergie et du Climat, France - VW Production Plant: o VW UP – EC-type approval for the vehicle granted by approval authority e13 Société Nationale de Certification et d'Homologation (SNCH) s.à.r.l., Luxembourg o VW Tuareg – EC-type approval for the vehicle granted by approval authority e1 KBA – Kraftfahrt Bundesamt, Germany

o AUDI Q7 – EC-type approval for the vehicle granted by approval authority e1 KBA – Kraftfahrt Bundesamt, Germany and e13 Société Nationale de Certification et d'Homologation (SNCH) s.à.r.l., Luxembourg o Seat Mii – EC-type approval for the vehicle granted by approval authority e13 Société Nationale de Certification et d'Homologation (SNCH) s.à.r.l., Luxembourg There are several specific reasons why these vehicles were not granted EC type-approval of the entire vehicle in the Slovak Republic: - Locating a production plant in a Member State does not automatically mean that the Member State and its approval authority are responsible for all aspects of type-approval for vehicles manufactured in these production plants and for ensuring conformity of production and inspection of it. - A manufacturer may ask in accordance with Art. 6 of Directive 2007/46/EC for granting of EC type-approval of a vehicle by the approval authority of any Member State, although only one application in one Member State for a particular type of vehicle. - As previously stated, the manufacturers have only located production plants in the Slovak Republic, while major development, construction and approval departments are in other Member States. For instance, PSA Peugeot Citroen is a long-standing French manufacturer with its headquarters in France. It had long ago asked for type-approval of its vehicles in France, even before it built its production plant in the Slovak Republic. Why would it suddenly change its type-approval authority and technical service for testing when its entire approval department is in France? It would certainly provide no advantage in terms of cost or time to move its approval department on each occasion to the Member State where it plans to produce a particular model. Moreover, one model can be manufactured at several production plants not just in Europe, but outside Europe, too. Likewise in this present period of globalisation, some models are produced by several manufacturers from the same design base to create so-called “twins” and “triplets”. An example is the ŠKODA Citigo, VW Up and SEAT Mii triplet. Although there are three manufacturers and three EC type-approvals, the manufacturer has found it preferable to ask a single type-approval authority for EC type-approval since the vehicle design is practically identical. The same holds true for KIA Motors, whose European headquarters are in the Netherlands, and Volkswagen AG, which is established and has its head office in Wolfsburg, Germany. - In addition, the Slovak Republic has no technical services accredited to perform tests and conduct studies according to all the regulatory acts providing for EC type-approval of entire vehicles which are listed in Annex IV of Directive 2007/46/EC. Ttherefore it is inefficient and not attractive for the manufacturers to have one type of vehicle tested by more than one technical services which can perform individual tests and are accredited to do so. - It is necessary to ask the vehicle manufacturers directly for any other specific reasons.

As to whether the above mentioned vehicles are also tested by in-house technical services, we cannot comment. This question should be directed to the type-approval authorities which have granted EC type-approval. Directive 2007/46/ES also permits testing by the manufacturers themselves, although the scope is limited under those regulatory acts by Annex XV to the Directive. The number of vehicles affected by the VW emissions scandal comes from the manufacturers themselves of the VW, ŠKODA, AUDI and SEAT models. The manufacturers can fastest determine by VIN and engine type the vehicles involved in the emissions scandal. Even if the Slovak Republic had carried out testing, it would be physically impossible to have checked whether or not all the model vehicles registered in the Slovak Republic were fitted with defeat devices. Regarding any further testing of diesel engines, the answer is provided in Point 10.

Regarding penalties under Act 725/2004 Coll. on conditions of vehicle operation in road traffic and on amendment of certain acts, as amended, these penalties may be imposed on any vehicles placed on the market and into service in road traffic within the Slovak Republic, not just for diesel engines in compliance with Euro 5/6 emission limits.

12. In autumn 2015 representatives of Member States voted on the second RDE package in the expert committee. Slovakia was one of the Member States that argued for watering down the proposal of the European Commission for the possible Conformity Factors (at least 2.0 for 1st stage instead of 1.6 and at least 1.5 for 2nd stage instead of 1.2) claiming that manufacturers should have time to prepare themselves. Given that car manufacturers knew from 2011 onwards that the new on-road testing is going to be introduced as of 2017 don’t you think that they had enough time to prepare themselves? Given that various experts and engineers, as well as US Environmental Protection Agency state that with current technology car manufacturers can easily meet the European or even American (40-60 mg/km) NOx emission limits, how can you justify the argument that “car manufacturers should have enough time to prepare”?

RDE legislation and its adoption is divided into four packages. The packages are approved in stages (approval of the third RDE package is expected at the TCMV by 20 December 2016). Once the proposal has been approved by the TCMV, it will be forwarded to the Parliament and publication is expected in April or May 2017. In our opinion, it would not be possible to start implementation of the Regulation before it will have been approved by the Parliament because any changes the Parliament might incorporate into the legislation can significantly change the requirements and conditions for implementing them. A possible earlier initiative could mean the industry might choose a different path in the development of new solutions, it would thereby have to subsequently change procedures, and the investment would have been pointless. Taking these facts into account and the proposed date for implementing the third RDE package in September 2017 (implementation time is 4-5 months, which often is not enough time to conduct studies and even for development and testing), we do not believe such a procedure to be in accordance with the principles of “smart regulation” and “reasonable lead-time” enshrined in CARS 2020, addressing the sustaining of competitiveness in the European automotive industry.