What lessons has Europe drawn from the uncovered emissions testing fraud? A look back at what was known before the scandal blew up and what has changed since.

Car emissions testing post VW scandal

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/20102064/m006-0025-en.srt

What has been the lesson  of the Volkswagen scandal?

Was the European Commission  aware of emissions breaches?

and speak to the Chair of the Committee  of Inquiry created in March 2016

Well before the scandal blew up,  we had met with experts

who told us of the unreliability of tests.

With this small device,  we'll start monitoring

and calculating CO2  and fuel consumption in real time.

And we'll display all that information on a  little tablet PC on the dashboard of the car.

The aim of John Keates' experiment  is to find out if there is a difference

between car C02 emission values  in real driving conditions

and the values declared  by manufacturers in their catalogues.

The tests today  are under normal driving conditions

so we've got the air conditioning on,  we've got the fan on lightly,

the lights are set so that  the driving lights are on.

We're not trying to artificially make it better  or worse, we're just giving a realistic figure.

The CO2 is the largest of the three  on the graphs.

Down here you can see  the oxides of nitrogen

and on the far right the CO2 production.

or on a country road  where there is a lot of stop-start traffic,

the fuel consumption and  the CO2 go up dramatically.

A 20-minute test in the English countryside  and on the motorway gave a decisive result.

We just finished that trip and  we averaged about 43 miles per gallon.

That works out to be  about 182-185 grams of CO2,

which works out to about 20% higher than  the average figure by the manufacturer.

Until 18 September 2015, this gap  between the results from laboratory tests,

which car manufacturers  are obliged to carry out,

and those obtained in real driving conditions

was accepted,  undervalued or simply ignored.

that VW had used test-rigging software  in their diesel cars

opened the eyes of the world.  But was it really such a new discovery?

It's rightly asked  where the Parliament was

when we already knew, had indications...

We do have a lot of MEPs asking questions  especially in the Environment Committee.

But in political life  you sometimes need an incident

or a crisis, as we have today  in the car industry.

that all of a sudden there was a possibility  to have a majority in the Parliament -

because we always need a majority -  a majority in the EP to say, OK, stop, now.

the Parliament has secured the necessary  majority to create a Committee of Inquiry.

It will have the power to investigate and hold  hearings with emissions testing authorities

to establish whether car manufacturers  have been the beneficiaries of a cover-up.

I want to make it very clear that  the EPP will do its utmost

to prevent this Committee from becoming  what could be termed a witch-hunt

either against industry  or against diesel technologies

where Europe has a  competitive advantage in the world.

The current legislation  only requires laboratory tests.

Their basis is in an obsolete  piece of European legislation called NEDC,

the New European Driving Cycle,  which dates back to the 1970s.

In Brussels,  one NGO is fighting for change.

For example, they use special lubricants,  which make the car move better.

They disconnect the battery  so that it doesn't charge during the test.

They test the vehicle at very  high temperatures so that it rolls better.

They use the engine management system  to get ultra low results just during the test.

Another part of the test measures how well  the car rolls and moves through the air,

so they'd remove the wing mirror,  they'd tape up the doors,

they'd make the car lighter, maybe  by taking out the back window.

All of those flexibilities  each make one or two percent,

but together they add up to  about a 25% difference

between the test results and  what drivers can achieve on the road.

Over to the Netherlands.  We meet a researcher

who has carried out a study on car CO2  emissions for the European Commission.

He says some manufacturers take more  advantage of leeway than others.

We know some manufacturers are more  reluctant to use the flexibilities than others

and that in itself already  creates false competition.

So it would be in the manufacturers'  interests to do something about them,

because we see that they are now forcing  each other into using these flexibilities

in order to get low CO2 results for vehicles  qualifying, for instance, for fiscal incentives.

The car lobby in Europe  still wields a lot of power.

In October 2015, the Member States  and the European Commission

granted manufacturers leeway  on emissions limits,

giving them in fact  a considerable period of time

to reduce the levels of NOx and  other pollutant gases to legal levels.

For its part, the Commission has proposed  another reform of emissions tests laws.

Tests will be conducted in  real driving conditions, on the roads,

but starting from 2021 instead  of the previously foreseen 2017.

We all know that there is a strong lobby

and the Inquiry Committee  will help to underline

and help the Commission  to be ambitious enough.

At the end of 2015, the European  Environment Agency estimated that

each year there are  430 000 premature deaths

caused by air pollution, to which  the automotive sector contributes.