Greenpeace Tasks EU Automakers On Emissions

Europe's automakers are doing their best to hinder European Union efforts to make cars more efficient and reduce their effect on the climate - with German firms the most obstructive  according to Greenpeace.
The organisation said in a report released recently: "The EU, time and again, has allowed the car industry to fundamentally weaken its efforts. Efforts to undermine legislation have been led by the German car industry, the most effective and well-connected car lobby in Europe."
The lobby had managed to delay legislation that would limit the amount of CO2, the gas most associated with global warming, that cars would be allowed to emit and got the authorities to water-down their proposals, the report said' The EU has allowed the car industry to fundamentally weaken its efforts.
European automakers countered that the proposed rules would damage sales and competition.
The EU is debating proposals from the European Commission, the bloc's executive, to bring in a law setting limits on the amount of CO2 cars in Europe are allowed to emit - a concept it first brought forward in 1995.
Environmental groups want the rules to penalise the makers of heavy, high-consumption cars which emit the most CO2/km and to be brought in as early as 2012 but automakers - especially in Germany, where larger and higher-consumption cars make up a relatively high proportion of total production - said such measures would threaten their competitiveness in the global market.