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, from 2013 onwards, 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.

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 and pools whose average specific emissions of CO₂ exceed their indicative targets. As the 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 the second paragraph of Article 4 of that Regulation and take into account only the 65 % lowest emitting vehicles of each manufacturer.

The data for 2011 was transmitted to the Commission by the deadline of 28 February 2012 specified in Article 8(2) of Regulation (EC) No 443/2009 by a majority of the Member States. Due to the late delivery of the data by three Member States the complete dataset was, however, only available to the Commission by the end of May.

Where, as a result of the verification of the data by the Commission, 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, the provisional data of that Member State was not adjusted.

In September 2012, Germany informed the Commission that approximately 200 000 registrations for 2011 had been omitted from the dataset submitted to the Commission in February 2012. In view of the strict timetable for confirming the data, there was not sufficient time for the Commission to allow manufacturers to verify those missing registrations. As a consequence, the records relating to those registrations cannot be included in the final dataset and cannot be taken into account for the calculation of the average specific emissions of the manufacturers concerned or their specific emissions targets.

On 20 June 2012, the Commission published the provisional data and notified 84 manufacturers of the provisional calculations of their average specific emissions of CO₂ in 2011 and their specific emissions targets in accordance with Article 8(4) of Regulation (EC) No 443/2009. Manufacturers were asked to verify the data and to notify the Commission of any errors within three months of receipt of the notification in accordance with the first subparagraph of Article 8(5) of that Regulation.

Thirty eight manufacturers submitted notifications of errors within the three-month deadline. Two manufacturers informed the Commission that there were errors in the datasets but did not notify corrections in accordance with Article 9(3) of Regulation (EU) No 1014/2010.

In the case of the 46 manufacturers that did not notify any errors in the datasets or did not notify in accordance with Article 9(3) of Regulation (EU) No 1014/2010 the provisional data and provisional calculations of the average specific emissions and the specific emissions targets should be confirmed without adjustments.

The Commission has verified the corrections notified by the manufacturers and the respective justifications as expressed through the error codes specified in Article 9(3) of Regulation (EU) No 1014/2010 and the dataset has been adjusted as appropriate.

In the case of records that have been identified by manufacturers with the error code B as set out in Article 9(3) of Regulation (EU) No 1014/2010, it is necessary to take into account the fact that manufacturers cannot verify or correct those records appropriately due to missing or incorrect identification parameters. Accordingly, an error margin should be applied to the CO₂ emission and mass values in those records.

The error margin should be calculated as the difference between the distances to the specific emissions 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 improve the distance to the target of the manufacturer.

The average specific emissions of CO₂ from new passenger cars registered in 2011, the specific emissions targets and the difference between those two values should be confirmed accordingly,