Fiona Hall, rapporteur for the opinion of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy. - Madam President, Commissioner Hedegaard mentioned the difficulties which this process has gone through. As is well known, this plenary vote should have taken place months ago, but the intervention of two heads of government caused the trialogue agreement reached under the Irish Presidency to be overturned. A secret deal between two leaders is no way to make European legislation, and it has seriously undermined the normal democratic codecision process.

Fortunately Parliament came back to the table and managed to limit the attempt to weaken the deal. This matters, not just in terms of reducing CO2 emissions and tackling climate change, but also because more efficient cars use less fuel and save money for hard-pressed individuals – up to a thousand pounds (EUR[nbsp ]1[nbsp ]200) a year for the average driver. It also matters because tight standards are driving the growth of very low-emission electric vehicles, creating thousands of extra jobs, including in my own constituency in the North-East of England.

Finally, I particularly welcome the closing of the loopholes in the test cycle, which have left so many people disenchanted about their failure to get fuel efficiency from their vehicles.