The trouble with a voluntary agreement is that it’s voluntary. That means you can shrug your shoulders and say “sorry, we tried - but it didn’t work out.” And if you’re clever you can say, “We’re getting there, we just need more time.” And that’s exactly what the car lobby has done, time after time. I’m not entirely sure how they’ve gotten away with it for so long. Imagine being 7 years late on a work deadline. What would your boss say?

But while the car industry was making excuses, the push to tackle climate change was growing. And it was obvious that the car makers were going to fail on their commitment to cut CO2 emissions levels to 140g per km by 2008.

So in October 2006 EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas announced legislation to cut CO2 emissions from cars soon)

But while Dimas was calling for legislation to make more energy efficient cars, enterprise and industry commissioner Günter Verheugen had other ideas on just what we needed to get car emissions under control. Even though they have had more than 10 years, Verheugen called for more time to get the whole fleet to meet the targets. In other words he wanted to give even more time, until 2015 for the car makers to get their act together. That’s 20 years after the 1995 voluntary agreement was in place.

Verheugen, from Germany, has close links to the car industry, helping to set up the working group CARS 21. Its primary remit is “to boost the competitiveness of the European car industry.” And his connections to the car industry run deeper still. Germany’s ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was a supervisory board member of VW. Verheugen is an old political ally and Schröder pushed for Verheugen to remain EU Commissioner for a second term.

While Dimas talks of cutting emissions (he supported a mandatory target of 120g CO2/km by 2012), Verheugen’s vocabulary is all about getting an integrated approach which will “share the burdens fairly”. It’s not hard to see why - the more the burden is shared the less German cars makers have to worry about cutting emissions, leaving them to sell more gas guzzling cars.

Pressure from the car makers didn’t stop the European Commission from announcing in February 2007 that it was going to review the 1995 “Community strategy to reduce CO2 emissions from passenger cars and improve fuel economy.”

But now that car emissions were finally on the agenda, there was a process to go through before the proposals were adopted. When the stakes are this high, anything can happen. Find out what in the next post.