«It is useless to invest in auto regulations that the US and China do not impose»- Corriere.it

The Euro 7 standard “will cost our car manufacturers unnecessary money”. This was said by the French Economy Minister, Bruno Le Maire, in Douvrin at the inauguration of the Automotive cell company’s electric battery gigafactory, a joint venture between Stellantis, Mercedes, and TotalEnergies. According to Le Maire, it would be better “to devote the same money to accelerating the electric vehicles and technologies of tomorrow”. “We must not spend money, billions, on standards that China and the US do not impose on their manufacturers,” he adds.

The eight opposing countries

Italy, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary don’t like the new Euro 7 regulation which should come into force on 1 July 2025 either. The opposite side, led by Paris and Rome, highlighted how the Euro 7 proposal risks “having negative effects on investments in the sector already engaged in the transition to electricity”. Germany, on the other hand, despite having expressed doubts about the legislation in the past, in the end decided not to join the non-paper that the eight countries sent to the Swedish presidency of the Council of the European Union. The Euro 7 standard establishes a limit of 60 milligrams per kilometer of nitrogen oxides, a value already respected by petrol cars but not by diesel ones, which currently have a ceiling of 80 mg/km. As regards CO2 emissions, a cut of between 100 and 300 milligrams per kilometer is imposed, while current regulations set this range between 500 and 1000 mg/km.

The producers

The most critical of the new legislation are the producers. The euro 7 proposal on polluting emissions would lead to an increase in direct costs from 4 to 10 times higher than that cited by the European Commission, according to a Frontier Economics study presented by Acea. The association points out that these additional costs do not match the purchase prices, but add further value to end users. The price increase would therefore be higher than the figures quoted in the study. “I would hope that there is a review of this intention of the European Community to bring Euro 7”, said the managing director of Renault, and president of Acea, Luca De Meo in recent days, who added: “The government Italian has taken a clear position in this sense and I thank him for the support».