Commission Implementing Decision of 20 December 2011 confirming the provisional calculation of average specific CO2 emissions and specific emissions targets for manufacturers of passenger cars for the calendar year 2010 pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 443/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council (Text with EEA relevance) (2011/878/EU)

Commission Implementing Decision

of 20 December 2011

confirming the provisional calculation of average specific CO₂ emissions and specific emissions targets for manufacturers of passenger cars for the calendar year 2010 pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 443/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council

(Text with EEA relevance)

(2011/878/EU)

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,

Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

Having regard to Regulation (EC) No 443/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 setting emission performance standards for new passenger cars as part of the Community’s integrated approach to reduce CO₂ emissions from light-duty vehicles(1), and in particular the second subparagraph of Article 8(5) and Article 10(1) thereof,

Whereas:

(1) The Commission is required, pursuant to Article 8(5) of Regulation (EC) No 443/2009, to confirm each year, the average specific emissions of CO₂ and the specific emissions target for each manufacturer of passenger cars in the Union as well as for each pool of manufacturers formed in accordance with Article 7(7) of that Regulation. On the basis of that confirmation, the Commission is to determine whether manufacturers and pools have complied with the requirements of Article 4 of that Regulation. Where it is clear that a manufacturer or a pool has failed to meet its specific emissions target, the Commission is required, pursuant to Article 9(1) of that Regulation, to issue excess emissions premiums by way of individual decisions addressed to the manufacturers or pool managers concerned.

(2) Pursuant to Article 4 of Regulation (EC) No 443/2009, the targets are binding on manufacturers and pools with effect from 2012. For the calendar years 2010 and 2011, the Commission should however calculate indicative targets and, pursuant to Article 8(6) of that Regulation, notify those manufacturers or pools whose average specific emissions exceed their indicative targets. As those targets for 2010 and 2011 will serve as indicators to manufacturers of the effort required to reach the mandatory target in 2012, it is appropriate to determine the average specific emissions of manufacturers for 2010 and 2011 in accordance with requirements set out in the second paragraph of Article 4 of that Regulation and take into account only the 65 % lowest emitting vehicles of each manufacturer.

(3) The data to be used for the calculation of the average specific emissions and the specific emissions targets is set out in Part C of Annex II to Regulation (EC) No 443/2009 and is based on Member States’ registrations of new passenger cars during the preceding calendar year. The data is taken from the certificates of conformity issued by the manufacturers or from documents providing equivalent information in accordance with Article 3(1) of Commission Regulation (EU) No 1014/2010 of 10 November 2010 on monitoring and reporting of data on the registration of new passenger cars pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 443/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council(2).

(4) The data for 2010 was transmitted to the Commission by the deadline of 28 February 2011 specified in Article 8(2) of Regulation (EC) No 443/2009 by a majority of the Member States. The complete datasets for all Member States were only, however, finally made available to the Commission by mid April and were subsequently provisionally verified.

(5) Where, as a result of the initial verification, it was evident that certain data were missing or manifestly incorrect, the Commission contacted the Member States concerned and, subject to the agreement of those Member States, adjusted or completed the data accordingly. Where no agreement could be reached with a Member State, the provisional data of that Member State was not adjusted.

(6) On 29 June 2011, the Commission published, in accordance with Article 8(4) of Regulation (EC) No 443/2009, the provisional data and notified 89 manufacturers of the provisional calculations of their average specific emissions in 2010 and their specific emissions targets. Manufacturers were asked to verify the data and to notify to the Commission any errors within 3 months of receipt of the notification in accordance with the first subparagraph of Article 8(5) of that Regulation.

(7) On 12 August, guidelines for the notification of errors in the CO₂ data from cars were published on the Commission website. The guidelines provide a format for notification and indicate the information required from the manufacturers to enable the Commission to take those errors into account.

(8) Fifteen manufacturers submitted notifications of errors within the 3-month deadline. One manufacturer submitted a complete notification after the expiry of the deadline. Seven manufacturers out of those 15 submitted notifications that included detailed information on the errors and justifications for the corrections proposed. The remaining eight manufacturers submitted summary notifications that only partially complied with the Commission’s recommendations as to the format and contents of the notifications. In addition to those manufacturers that submitted notifications of error, eight manufacturers informed the Commission that there were errors in the datasets without providing any further information or evidence as to the nature or reasons for those errors.

(9) In the case of the 73 manufacturers that did not notify any errors in the datasets or only informed the Commission of errors in the datasets without providing the necessary evidence, the provisional data and provisional calculations of the average specific emissions and the specific emissions targets should be confirmed without adjustments.

(10) Where manufacturers have provided the necessary information and evidence supporting the existence of errors in the datasets, the Commission should consider those notifications and, where appropriate, amend the provisional calculations of the average specific emissions and the targets.

(11) Member States’ registration authorities are solely responsible for the number of registrations reported to the Commission. As manufacturers’ sales data do not necessarily accurately reflect the number of registrations in a given Member State for a given period of time, it is not possible to consider errors in the number of registrations for the calculation of the average specific emissions. Only errors relating to the contents of the datasets for registered vehicles should therefore be considered. However, in some cases, manufacturers have notified that registrations should be attributed to another manufacturer. Those re-attributions should be reflected in the final confirmed datasets.

(12) It results from the complete notifications that the manufacturers were able to identify a part of the datasets as correct and proposed corrections to those parts of the datasets that could be verified. Between 4 and 15 per cent of the datasets consist, however, of registrations referring to unidentifiable vehicles for which values such as CO₂ emissions or mass cannot be verified by the manufacturer. This is usually due to missing information that is required in order for the manufacturer to identify the individual vehicles, more precisely the identification code composed of the type, variant and version of the vehicles concerned. In a small number of cases, registrations could be attributed to manufacturers, however, key data on CO₂ emissions and mass were not available.

(13) The Commission has verified the corrections proposed by the manufacturers and the supporting evidence. Where entries have been corrected either by inserting a missing value or by replacing an incorrect value for those registrations that can be verified by the manufacturer and the corrected values are consistent with values resulting from reference data sources, such as data from type approval documents, such corrections are justified. However, where a manufacturer has notified errors but not proposed corrections, notwithstanding that those errors could have been verified and corrected and has not sufficiently demonstrated that those corrections could not be made within the 3-month verification period, those errors should not be considered for the final calculation.

(14) In the case of registrations that can be attributed to, but not verified by the manufacturers, the values for CO₂ emissions and mass included in those registrations should still be used to calculate the average CO₂ emissions and specific emissions target. It is however necessary to take into account the fact that manufacturers cannot verify those values and ensure that the inclusion does not have a negative impact on the final values determined for the manufacturers concerned. Accordingly, an error margin should be applied to that calculation reflecting the individual situation of the manufacturer as described and justified in the notification of errors. More precisely, an error margin should be calculated for the average specific emissions and the average mass, since those two parameters determine the distance to the specific emissions target of each manufacturer, i.e. how close a manufacturer is to achieving its specific emission target.

(15) The error margin should be determined as the difference between the distances to the specific emission target expressed as the average emissions subtracted from the specific emissions targets calculated including and excluding those registrations that cannot be verified by the manufacturers. Regardless of whether that difference is positive or negative the error margin should always reduce the distance to the target of the manufacturer.

(16) In the case of registrations where the values on CO₂ emissions or mass are missing as well as the identification code, those registrations should not be taken into account for the final calculation of the average emissions.

(17) Since the 2010 data verification exercise is the first to be carried out pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 443/2009, it is appropriate to exceptionally consider also those notifications that did not include all the information required by the Commission for fully taking into account the errors. The error margins to be applied to the final calculations referred to in those notifications should however be calculated on the basis of the Commission’s own assessment of the number of registrations that cannot be verified by those manufacturers. It is also appropriate, exceptionally, to take into account, for the confirmation of 2010 data, the notification of errors that was submitted shortly after the expiry of the deadline.

(18) The average specific emissions of CO₂ from new passenger cars registered in 2010, the specific emissions targets and the difference between those two values should be confirmed accordingly,

HAS ADOPTED THIS DECISION:

(1)

OJ L 140, 5.6.2009, p. 1.

(2)

OJ L 293, 11.11.2010, p. 15.