The EU’s regulatory frenzy is also having a particular impact on the mobility sector. It is no news that motorised private transport is increasingly seen as an outdated model by green ideology in Brussels. However, the interventions that the Eurocrats want to allow themselves in order to push through their structural changes against the will of large sections of the population are becoming increasingly arrogant. The planned EU regulation on end-of-life vehicles is another attack on property disguised as a harmless environmental protection and recycling initiative.
Last year, there was criticism of plans to allow the EU to create opportunities for the effective expropriation of car owners through “compulsory purchase”. New regulation on end-of-life vehicles: scrapping internal combustion engines? This is how the EU wants to “promote” the shift to road transport
This was accompanied by new criteria for determining whether a car is still considered “in need of repair”. Even the predominantly pro-government Focus drew this cautionary conclusion at the time:
It is quite possible that the new rules will make it more difficult for owners of used cars to keep their vehicles running with repairs because they have been declared “unrepairable” or environmentally harmful.
The official background to such plans is the controversial Green Deal. The emphasis is primarily on increasing the ‘circular economy’ – in other words: The EU wants to recycle the materials from which your vehicle is made. But to get access to these materials, it needs to limit how you can dispose of your vehicle.
Strong criticism of car dealers’ obligation to provide evidence
This plan has since been endorsed by the Council of the European Union (see press release). Now the following point is causing concern: the EU wants to impose requirements that “whenever a used vehicle changes hands, the seller must document that it is not a scrap vehicle”. The press release claims that private sales would (for now?) be exempt from this requirement, as long as they are not done online. This does not seem so clear in the passages in that document.
Bavarian Transport Minister Christian Bernreiter also refused to be reassured by the plans in a press release: in his view, it is a breach of national licensing law. “The obligation to provide proof would mean new costs for citizens and more work for the authorities, but would not bring any added value. Enough is enough! Brussels should step on the gas to cut red tape and put the brakes on interference in property rights as quickly as possible!” He sees a risk that vehicles will quickly be labelled as scrap vehicles and thus worthless if they are removed from the register. The owner would then first have to prove the contrary.
This is how the EU turns your old car into a worthless scrap vehicle.
There still seems to be no clarity in the EU as to exactly what kind of evidence is required. Will a roadworthiness certificate be enough – and if so, what about all the vehicles that do not pass the main inspection? As it stands now: in the EU, “end-of-life vehicle” means a vehicle that is waste within the meaning of Article 3(1) of Directive 2008/98/EC or a vehicle that can no longer be repaired according to the criteria set out in Annex I, Part A, points 1 and 2.
This annex can be found, for example, here. This brings us to the very problem that was criticised last year. It defines the criteria that allegedly make a car technically or economically (!) “beyond repair”. These criteria include (emphasis added by the editors)
It does not make economic sense to repair a vehicle if its market value is lower than the cost of the repairs needed to bring it to a technical condition in the Union that would be sufficient to obtain a roadworthiness certificate in the Member State where the vehicle was registered before the repair.
This not only feels like interference (financial decisions are made by the vehicle owner, not the EU), it is. It means that it makes no difference whether a vehicle can be repaired “economically” outside the EU, where many things are much cheaper due to the lack of green design economy and regulatory insanity. If the cost in the EU is so high that it exceeds the market value of your car, it is deemed unrepairable – and therefore a scrap vehicle.
It also becomes critical if the vehicle’s identification number is missing, the owner is unknown, the national technical inspection has not been carried out for more than two years after the due date, or the vehicle is considered to have been stored inappropriately (because it is inadequately protected).
Targeted market intervention and transport policy through the back door
Of course, this does not mean that it has to be scrapped. In the end, you have to rely on motor vehicle experts, but of course they don’t work for free. So what? What do you do with vehicles that are classified as end-of-life vehicles according to the specifications? You cannot repair the car, and you cannot sell it either. Suddenly you have a worthless pile of scrap metal in your garage that you can only take to a scrap yard. This is definitely a form of expropriation. Possibly a form that could foster a thriving black market in some states, because many people love and depend on their cars, even if they are not covered by the seemingly generous exemptions for ‘classic cars’. But the course is clear.
This dirty game could be taken even further: if internal combustion engines are to be abolished, a fat punitive tax could simply be imposed on repair parts for petrol or diesel vehicles, to make it easier to control “economic irreparability”, since the climate apocalypse could be triggered as soon as the car is put back into service. It would be similar to the German heating dictatorship: the whole of Germany cannot be forced to change its heating systems spontaneously, but can be forced to install an expensive and inefficient heat pump if a reliable gas heating system breaks down, whether the homeowner wants it or not. Ultimately, unpopular technologies are simply pushed out of the market. The EU is creating leverage for the car industry through cleverly designed criteria. But it writes “environmental protection” into the label, perhaps so as not to be so obvious.
But you’ll expose yourself as naive if you believe the EU’s grandiose environmental and climate statements. Even Eurocrats often know that silly model calculations of supposed climate damage simply ignore important considerations. But it is also about the interests of a green industry that is greedy for cheap materials and sales (both of which can be achieved by driving out old vehicles and keeping their parts in the EU and recycling them here, forcing everyone who can still afford them to buy new vehicles). This is also transport policy by the back door, because anyone who loses their old vehicle in this way and cannot afford to buy a new one will be carless – and that is definitely the globalists’ aim. Perhaps the next step is to promote electric cargo bikes.
EU refuses to hand over parts – and argues with road deaths in third countries
Another interesting aspect of the plans is the way non-EU countries are treated. They stress the need to reduce the Union’s external ecological footprint. It literally says that regulations must also be created for exports:
This will ensure that only used vehicles deemed roadworthy in the Union can be exported to third countries, thus reducing the risk that exports of used vehicles from the Union contribute to air pollution or road accidents in third countries. To enable customs authorities to verify that these requirements are met at the time of export, exporters of used vehicles should be obliged to provide the authorities with the vehicle identification number and a declaration confirming that the used vehicle is not an end-of-life vehicle and that it is considered roadworthy.Source
The focus here is probably more on the fact that people in African countries, for example, should not enjoy cheap scrap cars from the EU that can be cheaply repaired from any spare parts and made roadworthy again. That would be sustainability in practice, but the EU wants to recycle cars and benefit from them itself. They seem to want to disguise this with the very strident thesis that the EU would thereby reduce ‘road accidents in third countries’ – and, of course, air pollution. To put it bluntly: no car accidents without cars, no car exhausts without cars.
Of course, this is not the EU’s job, as each country can choose to develop its own regulations and, if necessary, prevent the import of unwanted vehicles. This means that the EU is not only arrogant towards its own citizens, but also towards the rest of the world, to which it is otherwise so happy to give taxpayers’ money. At this point, to elevate yourself to the role of patron saint seems rather odd, because no one has asked for it.
What are the benefits for citizens?
As you read the plans, you can decide whether you are particularly critical of the attack on citizens’ property, which is evident here, or of its description as an act of mercy and kindness. In any case, it remains unclear what EU citizens are to gain from such a new regulation. Certain industries and an ideologically driven, regulation-obsessed caste of politicians will reap many benefits, but the EU’s donors, who once hoped for a liberal trade union in return, will gain nothing. Rather, it seems that more and more is simply being taken away from them. It is to be hoped that the plans do not materialise in this form.