Cities will not be able to impose restrictions based on vehicle emissions, the European Court of Justice has ruled. This body has dismissed the appeal filed by the city councils of Madrid, Paris and Brussels.
The pursuit of the car with a combustion engine carried out by numerous public bodies has suffered a major setback on learning that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has dismissed the appeals filed by the city councils of Madrid, Paris and Brussels.
These organizations had appealed the new community regulation 2016/646 on car homologation, since they understood that this subtracted powers to limit the pollutant emissions from vehicles passing through their respective territories.
Said appeal, filed in 2019, had been partially admitted by the General Court, an issue that was in turn appealed by Germany, Hungary and the European Commission itself. Now, the CJEU has dismissed the request of the three cities mentioned above.
«The homologation rules «refer to the commercialization of motor vehicles, and not to their subsequent circulation»
According to the Court of Justice, the General Court’s interpretation that this provision precludes certain local restrictions on movement aimed, in particular, at protecting the environment is not correct, pointing out that “Such an interpretation is not in line with the context in which this provision is inscribed, nor with the objectives of the regulations of which it is a part, nor with the genesis of said provision”. The CJEU complements by pointing out that “consequently, the Court of Justice concludes that the General Court erred in law by declaring that the contested regulation directly affects the plaintiff municipalities.”
“Given the foregoing, the Court of Justice annuls the appealed judgment, considers that the state of the litigation allows it to be resolved and enters to resolve it by declaring inadmissible the appeals for annulment filed by the plaintiff municipalities», he concludes.
requirements are not met
According to the Luxembourg-based judicial body, the petition “does not meet the concept of ‘person directly affected’ necessary in any appeal brought by a regional entity belonging to a Member State against an act of the European Union’.
This regulation originated after the scandal called Dieselgate carried out by Volkswagen and which gave rise to the WLTP emission control system. But nevertheless, Madrid, Paris and Brussels they considered that this regulation limited their powers when it came to setting a lower emission maximum.
At the time, the European Commission set limits based on those defined for the standard Euro 6, assigning correction coefficients in order to take into account “certain statistical and technical uncertainties”.
Thus, for a limit defined in the Euro 6 standard of 80 mg/km, the limit was set with respect to tests in real conditions at 168 mg/km for a transitional period, and then at 120 mg/km. The city councils of Paris, Brussels and Madrid considered that the Commission could not adopt the values for nitrogen oxide emissions that it established, since were less demanding than the limits that had been set for the applicable standard, Euro 6.
The court’s response has been that the homologation rules “refer to the marketing of motor vehicles, and not to their subsequent circulation” and recalls that “the plaintiff municipalities do not have powers in matters of vehicle homologation”.