The Commission would monitor the implementation of the commitment, on the basis of tests conducted by independent laboratories and possibly with the involvement of national type-approval authorities.

If any specific problems or technological innovations change this situation in the future, the Commission will be informed by the national type-approval authorities in the appropriate working groups and will adopt the necessary measures.

Secondly, the directive provides constructors and the type-approval authorities with a reasonable amount of time to carry out compliance checks on the 600 or so types on the market, a period that takes into account the car industry’s normal production cycles.

In particular, I think the ability of manufacturers of all scales and sizes to be able to get their vehicles approved by a national type-approval authority to a European regulation and to be able to sell those vehicles in every market across the European Union is a major step forward.