On Tuesday, Guido Sacconi, the Rapporteur for the cars legislation on the Environment Committee, announced his compromise amendments as the final work on the brief before the vote takes place in the Environment Committee.

However, given that he appears to have adopted the EPP (Conservative) position almost wholesale, I'm not sure why this is still called a compromise, rather than calling it the “surrender amendments”.

The “compromise” that he has reached with the EPP group (who ruled the Industry Committee and are heavily influenced by the car industry, and the German manufacturers) includes the following:

• While it does set a long term target for CO2 reduction to 2020, it has been written in such a way as to allow a review in 2014, which would open the door for the industry to argue again about lead times and targets, and could seriously weaken the legislation.



• A phase in starting at 70% compliance. As Transport & Environment have shown this effectively allows the car manufacturers to carry on with business as usual to 2015, then the above review will mean they will not have to act for a long time.



• Eco Innovations (on top of the “integrated approach”) such as solar roofs and low rolling resistance tyres will be allowed.



• Derogations for “trouble” brands - i.e. the ones that are heavy and highly polluting, that do not sell that many models (under 220,000 - unbelievably, that's counted as a low amount!) per year. This would mean that they have to only make a 25% saving and then no more. It also means that some companies that can pool, such as Jaguar or Ferrari would get additional allowances, meaning that they wouldn't have to do a thing to reach their targets.



• Penalties for non compliance to be set at €50 per g. Remember how low penalties in America have meant that the car industry simply chooses to pay fines rather than comply with climate saving legislation, even though the legislation is weak. With penalties this low, what is there to stop them driving over the climate again in Europe?

Now, these EPP amendments are clearly not a good thing. However, I am not sure that Mr Sacconi will have expected the response from other groups. The rest of the socialists (Sacconi's own group in the parliament) have rejected this deal outright, and Chris Davies, the shadow Raporteur today sent him an e-mail (copied into the rest of the environment committee) that stated very clearly that he felt that these amendments did not go nearly far enough. There may also have been a reference to the need for Sacconi to set his sights higher!

As you can imagine there has been some frantic negotiations in light of this proposal before the vote.

So, the question to Mr Sacconi is:

are you going to continue to push these surrender amendments for the EPP and German car industry, or will you listen to your own group, the greens, independents and the ALDE (liberals), and come up with amendments that really are a good compromise (but not for the climate, obviously)?

The vote is happening now. I'll let you know what happens as soon as I hear.