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Use of Expertise within the
European Commission:
Instrumental or Tactical?
Analysis of the use of expertise by the
European Commission in the diesel-car
emission regulation case
Author: Camilla Villano (S1945556)
Supervisor: Johan Christensen
Second Reader: Anchrit Wille
Public Administration: International & European Governance
Faculty of Governance & Global Affairs
Leiden University
Words: 18000
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INDEX
Chapter 1: Introduction ... 3
1.1 Diesel-car emission regulation case overview ... 3
1.2 Research Question ... 5
1.3 Expectations ... 5
1.4 Research Design and Methodology ... 7
Chapter 2: Theory ... 8
2.1 Role And Use Of Expertise Within The European Commission ... 8
2.2 Expectations ... 12
2.2.1 Expert Knowledge biased due to high influence from interest groups ... 12
2.2.3 Expertise is biased due to high influence from Member States... 17
2.3 Conclusion ... 19
Chapter 3: Methodology ... 20
3.1 Research Design: Single Case Study ... 20
3.2 Why the diesel-car emission regulation case ... 21
3.3 Methodology: Process-Tracing ... 21
3.4 Data Collection ... 22
2.5 Operationalization ... 23
3.6 Common Threats to Inference ... 24
3.7 Conclusion ... 25
Chapter 4: Analysis ... 26
4.1 Diesel Car Emission Regulation Case Description: ... 26
4.2 The use of expertise by the European Commission in the diesel-car emission regulation case .. 29
4.2.1 The JRC role in the Diesel Car Emission Regulation Case ... 30
4.2.2 The main pitfalls of the European Commission in the Volkswagen Scandal ... 33
4.3 Expert Knowledge is biased due to high influence from interest groups ... 37
4.4 Bureaucratic Politics explains the use of expertise within the EU. ... 40
4.5 Knowledge is biased by high influence from Member States in expert working groups ... 42
4.6 Results ... 44 4.6 Conclusion ... 45 Chapter 5: Conclusion ... 46 5.1 Conclusion ... 46 5.2 Academic implications ... 47 5.3 Study limitations ... 48 5.4 Discussion ... 49
ANNEX: Documents used... 50
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Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Diesel-car emission regulation case overview
In 2015 the 4 Billion German company, Volkswagen (VW) has been caught cheating on his diesel car emission performance modifying its cars and presenting them much less polluting than they actually were (The Guardian, 2015). The mischief was ultimately confirmed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which declared that almost 500,000 VW diesel cars present in America were emitting more than double nitrogen oxides (NOx) respect to the standard accepted by the law (The Guardian, 2015). Since then, VW confessed that the event is not limited to the cars sold in the United States (US) but it affects almost eleven million cars in the world (The Guardian, 2015). This event led to much more dangerous NOx emission present into the air respect to the legal standards (The Guardian, 2015).
The EPA was supported by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), a non-governmental organization (NGO), that had a key role in discovering the emission discrepancies, by performing independent on-road emissions tests on VW’s diesel cars (The Guardian, 2015). The emissions performance of Volkswagen cars was so bad with respect to the legal standards that the ICCT performed other tests on a dynamometer to be 100 per cent sure (The Guardian, 2015). It was the ICCT that got in touch with the EPA and warned them that further investigation would have been needed (The Guardian, 2015).
This scandal means enormous consequences for the environment and human health (The Guardian, 2015). The higher emissions can lead to strong inflammation of the airways and strongly worsen the breathing for any person (The Guardian, 2015). Moreover, the NOx emissions can easily react with other compounds present in the air leading to bad respiratory conditions and increasing the risk for heart diseases (The Guardian, 2015).
While those events were taking place in America, in Europe the European Commission (EC) and the European Parliament (EP) were aware of the enormous differences between the NOx emissions of diesel cars measured through the laboratory tests – all meeting the legal limit – and their actual emissions in real driving conditions, highly exceeding the legal limit (European Parliament, 2017). The existence of those differences, and their significant impact on meeting the air quality objectives set up with the European air quality standards, have been known to the Commission, Member States representative and to many other stakeholders since 2010/
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2011 (European Parliament, 2017). This was possible thanks to specific researches done by the in-house expertise body of the European Commission, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) that confirmed that the discrepancies in the emissions by many car manufacturers were happening since 2010-2011 (JRC, 2011). Some key actors, such as the commissioner Janez Potocnik’s (DG Environment) campaigned to start taking action about it in the same year (European Parliament, 2017).
One year later a special "real driving emissions (RDE)" working group with stakeholder Member States and industry is established by the Directorate General for internal market, industries and SMEs (DG Grow), with main objective the development of a new and more robust Real Driving Emission (RDE) test for diesel cars (European Praliament, 2017).
In November 2012, the Commission publishes its plan to deal with the issue as part of a broader policy paper on the car industry called CARS2020. The key point is that the Commission says it will introduce more robust, on-road testing of cars from 2017 (European Commission, 2012). It’s noticeable that the commission needed a very long time to introduce new real driving emissions tests. This long process can only be partly explained by the complex procedure that the development of a new test procedure usually takes (European Parliament, 2017). Even if the length of the decision-making and administrative processes at the EU level is taken into account, it is not enough to explain why the Commission took such a long time to introduce new test procedure, which if implemented earlier, could have also discovered cheating car manufacturers (European Parliament, 2017).
The official reason behind the excessive length of Commissions of the implementation of real driving emission test, was the financial crisis of 2008 (Tajani, 2013). However, I believe this is not the only reason behind the behaviour of the European Commission, which actually used the knowledge provided by its in-house expertise centre not an instrumental way.
All this information led me to try to understand what was the role of the European Commission (EC) in this case. During this research, I am going to uncover the relationship between the JRC and the European Commission, by looking beyond the surface and understand why the Commission did not try to anticipate action on limiting diesel cars emissions until the Environmental Protection Agency found out about Volkswagen fraud. Moreover, understand what led the Commission to use expertise in a certain way.
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1.2 Research Question
Many authors analysed the European Commission as an expert-based organization, in which expertise is the main basis of its decision-making process. The big part of literature about the European Commission has been concentrated mainly on its role as a technocratic organisation, whose actions are guided by rationalistic decision-making processes and an instrumental use of expertise (Boswell, 2008). The Commission always tries to use knowledge to legitimize most of their decisions (Boswell, 2008). It tries to show itself as an “experts” organization that has easy access to important data that lead to a “cross-national comparative perspective” that would be impossible to obtain at a national level (Boswell, 2008). The fact that is very easy to obtain this kind of knowledge gives the Commission the authority to make Union-level regulation (Stevens, 2001). Moreover, the EC focus on regulatory, despite than distributive, policy at the EU level leads to a strong EC’s dependence on expert knowledge rather than material resources (Radaelli, 1996).
However really few authors analysed the failures of the EC as an expert-based organization. There are some theoretical explanations on why in certain occasion, The Commission does not act as rational decision-makers because of its fragmented structure (Directorate Generals, DGs) that most of the time have different interests at heart and do not even communicate with each other (Cini, 2008 & Koch, 2011). However, no real empirical case has been analysed and investigated in order to give theoretical explanations behind a misuse of expertise within the EC.
That is why, I decided to analyse an empirical case, the diesel-car emission regulation case, which clearly shows the lack of a purely expert-base decision making within the EC. Moreover, through the analysis of this case I am going to answer the following research question: How did the European Commission use expert knowledge to address the issue of the diesel-car emission regulations, and what explains their use of expertise?
1.3 Expectations
In this dissertation, I will try to answer my research question, and understand the reasons behind the tactical use of expertise from the European Commission in this particular case. In order to do that I decided to focus on three main expectations that, based on previous theories, could offer valid explanations to why the EC failed in utilizing expertise in an instrumental way:
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1. Expert Knowledge was biased due to high influence from interest groups
Since the late 1980s, there has been a fast increase of interest groups, business association and national interest groups at a European-level in Brussels (Klüver, Braun, & Beyers, 2015). The EU structure highly favours lobbying of interest groups and offers many access points to them (Klüver, Braun, & Beyers, 2015). Interest groups can, for instance, ignore inactive governments and directly lobby all the key European institutions to obtain favourable policies (Klüver, Braun, & Beyers, 2015).
Therefore, interest groups are part of a very complicated and multi-layered institutional context that gives them the chance to pursue their interests.
Between all the corporate lobbying associations that operates within the Commission, the car industry is one of the most influential corporate associations within the EC (Chari & O'Donovan, 2011).
Therefore, the expectation is that interest groups, managed to influence the EC during the diesel-emission regulation case.
2. Bureaucratic politics explains the use of expertise within the EU.
The European Commission is characterized as a multi-organization composed by different Directorates General (DGs), which often are characterized by strong differences regarding their ideas, internal culture and policy objectives (Cini, 2008). Many research of the Commission give an image of Directorates-General with different, if not opposite, administrative cultures and diverse final objectives (Cini, 2008).
Because of this complex structure, the Commission most of the time, does not work as a unitary actor, even though the organisation in itself is, in legal terms, a single entity (Koch & Lindenthal, 2011).
It is often the case, that there are many difficulties within the Commission in show itself as unitary entity, because each DGs follow their own agendas (Koch & Lindenthal, 2011). Therefore, each DG usually responds in its own way to the obligations to implement regulations (Koch & Lindenthal, 2011).
The expectation is that bureaucratic politics, is one of the reason behind the biased use of knowledge by the European Commission.
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The EC tries to involve national governments into the decision-making process in order to get extra necessary knowledge, but also to increase their legitimacy in front of the public (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2010). The high degree of involvement of member states in expert working groups should be a way to develop a more efficient working environment since they are also high dependent on member states work to implement and monitor policymaking (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2010). However highly involved member states could easily lead to biased expertise from member states trying to develop their personal national interests, rather than using knowledge in an objective and instrumental way.
The expectation is that the knowledge can be biased not only by opinions provided by external interest groups such as businesses, but also by member states.
1.4 Research Design and Methodology
In order to prove my dependent variable (tactical use of expertise) and my three independent variables (influence from interest group, bureaucratic politics, influence from member states), I am going to use as a research design a single-case study that examines various evidence drawn from various documents released by the European Commission and the European Parliament. The more sensitive documents were realised thanks to various newspaper that requested them in order to have a deeper knowledge about the role of the EC within the Volkswagen fraud. The single-case study design has been chosen because it is the best fit for explaining in a substantial way a specific outcome of a determined case (Toshkov, 2016). In addition, my design is Y-Centred; I am interested in explaining a particular empirical outcome through process tracing.
Process tracing is the method that best suit this case, because it allows us to uncover the causal mechanism through the collection of different evidences. I’ll follow a deductive reasoning, in which I’ll test various hypotheses consecutively until the one that cannot be eliminated is found (Toshkov, 2016), this research design gives the possibility to discover which causal mechanisms can and which cannot lead to a final outcome. In this case, the particular outcome is the tactical use of expertise by the European Commission and three main factors that contributed to it: influence of interests group, bureaucratic politics and influence from member states. By drawing evidence from within the case, in order to later evaluate the competing hypotheses, I will be able to acquire the goal of the research.
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Chapter 2: Theory
2.1 Role and Use of Expertise within the European Commission
What explains the use of expertise within the European Commission?Expertise and rational decision making is seen to play a central role within the EU policymaking process. EU decision-making is multi-level and because it involves a higher plurality of actors than national systems, it can be easily interfered with (Holst & Moodie, 2015). Three main institutions govern the European Union decision-making process: the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council. In this dissertation I am going to focus on the European Commission, however in order to understand its functioning also the other two need to be mentioned. The European Commission has the main role of initiating and draft policy proposals (Ellinas & Suleiman, 2012). It also gives meaningful input in all the stages of the legislative process and it has the duty of regulating and monitoring the implementation of EU laws (Ellinas & Suleiman, 2012). Directorate Generals (DGs) that regulate different policy areas compose the Commission (Ellinas & Suleiman, 2012). The Commission also needs to report to the Council of Ministers, which is one of the most powerful institutions in the EU because representative of Member States (Ellinas & Suleiman, 2012). On the other hand, the European Parliament should be the watchdog of the commission (Ellinas & Suleiman, 2012). The Parliament power has increased tremendously in the last few years, however its ability to effectively control the Commission is limited by its size and internal fragmentation (Ellinas & Suleiman, 2012).
From this image, we can see that the legislative framework of the EU is built as a multi-layered system, which has as its main aim the production of regulatory policy (Radaelli, 1999). Regulatory policies aim at efficiency, rather than redistribution (Radaelli, 1999). According to theory, knowledge is the main resource in regulatory policy-making process, and the Commission maximizes the use of it extensively (Radaelli, 1999). This makes them optimal for discussion and active debate in expert associations, whereas redistribution foster the politicians, political parties and the public’s opinion because of its effect on the class structure (Radaelli, 1999). In short, the Commission is seen as expert-based policy maker, embedded in a
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layered system that constrain them also to compromise with national interests of member states because of the key role the Council and the EP play in the decision-making process.
In particular, the majority of studies on the European Commission (EC) has often concentrated their attention on the importance of its role as a technocratic “temple”, whose tasks are based on rationalistic decision-making process and the use of expertise (Boswell, 2008). The European Commission’s role has always been questioned, because of its lack of democratically elected figures in key positions and its activities are always demand for justifications (Boswell, 2008). That is why the Commission always tries to use knowledge to legitimize most of their decisions. The “fair” and instrumental use of expertise is viewed as fundamental in order to ensure the Commission’s institutional autonomy and social legitimacy (Holst & Moodie, 2015). Its ability to build policies proposal in a neutral way and based on rational evidence is the base of its authority (Holst & Moodie, 2015). In addition, the Commission often uses expertise in order to back-up its policy proposal, and increase its legitimacy, since the citizens have not elected the commissioners involved in policy-making (Boswell, 2008). Moreover, since the majority of policies are regulatory, rather than distributive, leads to a high dependence on expert knowledge rather than material resources (Boswell, 2008).
The European Commission is also often seen as an “experts” organization because it has easy access to important data which leads to a sort of “cross-national comparative perspective” impossible to achieve at a national level (Boswell, 2008, p.487). Access to this type of knowledge allows the Commission to make Union-level regulation (Stevens, 2001). Because of this, the type of experts that cooperate with the European Commission has major consequences on the direction of policy-making and the quality of policy proposals. That is why, the EC’s as initiator in the policy proposal makes it very attractive for external actors such as lobbyist, independent agencies and more, to provide their expertise directly in order to steer the policy making process in their favour (Vassalos, 2013). It would be too risky for interest groups to act directly at the parliament and council level, since more than 50% of the legislations applied in the EU Member states is decided within the European Commission (Vassalos, 2013).
There are multiple mechanisms of including external expertise within policy-making in the European Commission. First of all the Commission has its own research centre, however it is very small and not always capable of satisfying all of the Commission needs for all the different subjects it has to legislate on (Vassalos, 2013). For instance, less than 13000 Commission’s
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personnel is involved with policymaking, this situation leaves the Commission no choice, than to rely also on external expertise (Vassalos, 2013). There was also an exponential growing number of knowledge-based agencies at the European level that was created to support the different DGs within the Commission in EU policy-making (Holst & Moodie, 2015). In short, the Commission needs to rely on external expertise because it does not have all the necessary expertise within the organisation.
As already stated before, the Commission lays its legitimacy and authority on its expert based policy-making decision-making process. However, in order to fully understand the use of expertise from an Intergovernmental Organization, there is the need to analyse also how knowledge can be utilized within a public organization. According to Boswell, Organizations can depend on expertise to ensure that procedures are based on knowledge and rational reasoning or to gain legitimacy (2008). Through expertise you can strengthen your position about a policy or steer organizational debate in case of conflicts over a certain topic (Boswell, 2008). Radaelli, defined the decision-making procedure that utilizes rational reasoning as its main power as a “technocracy” (1999). Technocracy is usually put in contraposition to democracy (Radaelli, 1999). Indeed, while expertise is the way to gain legitimacy in technocracy, democracy bases its decision-making procedures on popular consent (Boswell, 2008).
I need to answer the question: how can knowledge be actually used by international bodies such as the EC? Authors such as Boswell, Radaelli and Schrefler show that expertise use is not limited to a use or non-use of instrumental knowledge (2006, 2010). Actually, depending on the context in which expertise is used, it can be categorized in four different ways (Schrefler, 2010). The first one is the instrumental use of knowledge (Schrefler, 2010). It happens when an international body needs to perform specific, specialized tasks. This approach is based on the fact that once there is a policy problem, knowledge is the best tool in order to solve it (Schrefler, 2010). The second type of knowledge utilization is a legitimacy use of knowledge (Schrefler, 2010). It derives from the desire of an International body to gain legitimacy with external stakeholders (Boswell, 2006). According to this, using knowledge can be a means for an organization to prove its objective competence that allows it to regulate as an actor super partes at a supranational level (Radaelli,1995) The third type of knowledge use is a tactical use of expertise (Boswell, 2006). It is usually used in order to increase the political or reputation power of the international body in order to strengthen its position in certain matters (Schrefler, 2010).
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The last approach to use knowledge is the “non-use “of expertise. This kind could be used in order to protect its policy proposal against evidence that clearly contradict it, or in order to avoid taking an explicit stance against a salient policy problem (Schrefler, 2010). To wrap-up knowledge utilization can be classified in four kind of use according to Schrefler, Boswell and Radaelli: Instrumental, Legitimate, Tactical and Non-use.
After the Financial Crisis of 2007/2008, the most famous claim is that the Commission utilizes expertise in a strategic way in order to try to obtain specific policy objectives and increase its own power (Holst & Moodie, 2015). The main issue is not solely a lack of for “democracy”, but also the utilization of knowledge in a tactical way that shows that expertise is used to serve personal interest rather than strengthening the quality of policy outputs (Holst & Moodie, 2015). Accordingly, the Commission often gives the impression that its main aim is to keep its strong relationship with businesses rather than expressing the desire of citizens (Vassalos, 2013). This gives the idea that the impact of expertise in policy-making is highly dependent on the ability of the groups transmitting this knowledge to gain and leverage on their bureaucratic power (Holst & Moodie, 2015).
Moreover, the Commission itself also has strong concern about the tactical, politicized use of knowledge (Vassalos, 2013). It is aware of the “risk” of selective knowledge utilization and that policymakers often just listen to the part of the argument of certain privileged groups get access more easily than others do to the decision-making process (European Commission 2001:17). At the end, it is clear that since the economic crisis of 2008, the Commission is highly focused in getting out of the crisis by involving more business interest groups in regulations in order to get extra expertise and build policies with the main aim to recover from the financial crisis.
Besides the high interest in the analysis of how to use knowledge within bureaucratic organizations, few authors have analysed real empirical cases in which bureaucratic bodies utilize knowledge in a tactical way. In particular, the Commission’s tactical use of expertise was not often analysed in depth. There is some research on the fact that the Commission utilize knowledge in a tactical way in rare occasions to obtain certain policy objectives (Holst & Moodie, 2015). There are also some research that shows that the Commission does not act as a rational decision-maker because of its fragmented structure (Directorate Generals, DGs) that most of the time have different interests at heart and do not even communicate with each other (Cini, 2008 & Koch, 2011). Nevertheless, I believe that there is much more to be analysed on
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why and what are the main motivations behind the European Commission use of expertise in a tactical way rather than instrumental. That is the reason that led me to analyse in depth an event in which the European Commission seems to have used expertise in a tactical way and understand which are the main reasons behind this use of expertise.
Building on previous literature, I propose three possible explanations on why the commission could utilize knowledge in a tactical way: firstly, expert knowledge can be biased due to high influence from external and internal groups; secondly bureaucratic politics can influence in a negative way the use of expertise within the EU; and lastly expert knowledge can be biased by influence from member states. In the next paragraph, I am going to analyse these three expectations.
2.2 Expectations
2.2.1 Expert Knowledge biased due to high influence from interest groups
The first possible explanation regarding why knowledge is not used in an instrumental way from the European Commission, can be the role that interest groups play in the European Commission decision-making process.
The EC constitutes a structure that highly favours lobbying of interest groups (Klüver, Braun, & Beyers, 2015). It offers many ways to enter their system to them (Klüver, Braun, & Beyers, 2015). Interest groups can, also ignore their governments and directly lobby within the European institutions to achieve their main objectives (Klüver, Braun, & Beyers, 2015). Therefore, interest groups are part of a multi-layered and hard to understand institutional environment that gives them the key to successfully pursue their aims (Chari & O'Donovan, 2011). Moreover, the EC regulates lobbies less respect to other institutions (Chari & O'Donovan, 2011). For instance, registration for lobbies is optional and not compulsory (Chari & O'Donovan, 2011).
Since the 80s, there has been an intense expansion of lobbying within the EU institutions; European-level interest associations, national interest associations, and direct representation of lobbyists in Brussels started increasing at a very high speed (Chari & O'Donovan, 2011). This sudden lobby growth has been usually associated with the creation of the single European economic market and the transfer of key economic responsibilities from local governments to the European Institutions (Klüver, Braun, & Beyers, 2015). Moreover, because of the
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technocratic structure of EU policy making, the space for voluntary public participation, is quite restricted (Klüver, Braun, & Beyers, 2015).
Between all the European Institution, the Commission, because of its executive role, became one of the most popular access point for interest groups (Klüver, Braun, & Beyers, 2015). However, not all the EU policies, see an active participation of interest groups, most of the time it depends from policies’ characteristics such as the complexity, salience and degree of conflict that EC’s proposal are composed by (Klüver, Braun, & Beyers, 2015). Interest groups also easily adapted to the multi-arena that characterize EU policy-making in many fields (Klüver, Braun, & Beyers, 2015).
As pointed out by Gornitzka and Sverdrup, the European Commission came to be seen as one of the main hot-spots for relationship with external actors, and it started to be seen as a place where those actors can easily give their inputs in policy-making procedures (2015). The Commission heavily relies on external actor information and expertise in order to strengthen the quality of its policy proposals, but it is still expected to have a balanced representation of all the stakeholders and external actors when it has to compose an expert group (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2015). Most of the times, an expert group is composed following this procedure: firstly, selection of the main stakeholders involved and includes them in expert venues; secondly, there is the need to balance the group in order to make sure all the different interests in society are represented (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2015). This procedure, does not only ensure that the commission has a balanced representation of interest groups, but it also protects the EC, from being accused of favouritism towards specific interest group (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2015).
The majority of DGs also have access to many set of expert groups (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2015). However, as stated above, the intensity of interest group participation highly depends on the characteristics of the policy area. Furthermore, also the DGs’ type of task has a very strong effect on the degree of inclusion of different interests groups such as private sector actors and NGOs (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2015). For instance, NGOs have less chances to be included in expert groups for DGs with distributive tasks than for other DGs; instead, businesses and industries association have higher chances to be involved in DG’s with distributive tasks (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2015).
The degree of external pressures that each DG face is also a very important element that helps us understand why some DG units involve certain societal actors as experts in the policy making
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process, respect to others (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2015). For instance, Business actors are involved, the majority of time, as experts by DGs in the preparatory process of a legislative proposal, and excluded from the monitoring and implementation part (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2015). NGOs instead, are often included in the monitoring implementation part of the policy (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2015).
According to this overview, every interest group should have the same influence in policy-decision making; nevertheless, reality is often different from theories and in fact, a high number of researches shows that business interests have a much higher influence than other types of actors in the EC (Dür, Bernhagen, & Marshall, 2015). One of the reasons that justify the high influence of business in the commission is that there is a clear EU’s institutional bias in favour of policies that boost market efficiencies (Dür, Bernhagen, & Marshall, 2015). Another reason is that individual firms constantly accumulate knowledge relevant to public policy issues just by performing their everyday tasks (Dür, Bernhagen, & Marshall, 2015). This leads to a point where they can easily exchange useful resources such as money and expertise, for privileged access to key political decision-makers (Dür, Bernhagen, & Marshall, 2015). Once they get access to key policy actors, businesses can influence public decision-making because they control the relevant information respect to their counterparts (Dür, Bernhagen, & Marshall, 2015). The last cause behind this phenomenon is that the EC needs to strengthen its legitimacy in front of the EP and Council, and it often looks for help from the private sector in order to increase the legitimacy and the validity of their policy proposal (Dür, Bernhagen, & Marshall, 2015).
Just like key policy makers also the Commission’s civil servants are looking for strengthening the relationship with corporate actors and interest groups because they can provide key information in all the areas that are too complex and technical for them (Broscheid & Coen, 2007). As already underlined, Private sector actors, have a type of practical and technical knowledge that can only be gained through constant practical interaction with real life episodes that supra national institutions cannot have (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2015). Because of this, involving interest groups and get private sector actors expertise can be seen as a rational decision, that clearly justifies why the commission wants to keep a good relationship with them and give them easy access to EU policy decision-making processes (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2015 ).
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Because the EU multi-level framework facilitates the entrance of different interest groups and needs practical knowledge that only external actors can give, it makes sense to believe that external European actors and in particular business actors can easily manipulate expertise in order achieve their interests. Especially for the EC, interest groups play a very important role and can easily access both the DGs and the Civil Servants.
The implication of this on knowledge utilization is both positive and negative. Positive because the Commission has a lot of external expertise that can strengthen the quality of policies and that they could not gain only by relying on in-house expertise. However, the negative impact is that external actors, especially businesses, because of the phenomenon of information’s asymmetry, can easily provide only the knowledge that can get the commission to solve their personal interests. The expectation is that the in-house expertise provided by the EC can be biased and manipulated by non-objective expertise and opinions provided by external interest groups, in particular, businesses.
2.2.2 Bureaucratic Politics explains the use of expertise within the EU
Bureaucratic Politics can be a second explanation that leads to a biased use of expertise from the European Commission. According to Radaelli, bureaucratic politics is a phenomenon composed by the following characteritics: fragmentation, coalition formation, bargaining, networking and negotiation (1999).
The bureaucratic politics model consists of the idea that the differences between politics and public administration are not clearly defined (Hartlapp, Metz, & Rauh, 2013). This confused division of powers allows civil servants to steer the political debate without having to be held accountable, while it gives politicians reasons to back-up difficult decisions as the results of rational decision-making processes (Hartlapp, Metz, & Rauh, 2013). Therefore, the bureaucratic politics model is based on the expectation that the role of the people working within the organization is the only predictor of their policy preferences (Hartlapp, Metz, & Rauh, 2013). The Bureaucratic Politics Model designed by Allison T shows that policy preferences are best predicted, not only by the mission of the organization, but by the self-interest of different actors that are hierarchically more powerful than the others (Allison T. & H. Halperin, 1972).
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The European Commission in theory represents only one organization, but in reality, all of its Directorate Generals show different visions, organizational preferences and policy styles and also different ways of prioritizing political issues (Cini, 2008). Because of this complex inner structure, the Commission cannot be seen as a unitary actor, even though in legal terms, it is considered as a single entity (Koch & Lindenthal, 2011).
Because every DG may follow their own political and organizational objectives and administrative discretion (Cini, 2008), the Commission is composed by different organizations within one organization (Koch & Lindenthal, 2011). There are often many difficulties in working towards a common goal within the Commission, because every DGs look at their own agenda, without considering the bigger picture (Koch & Lindenthal, 2011).
By applying the bureaucratic politics model to the European Commission, preferences of individual DGs can be explained by their main competences, their culture, the existing policies and instruments that they control and the relationships developed with various stakeholders in the past (Cini, 2008).
In particular, some DGs hold advantages over others when internal conflicts on certain policies take place. For instance, in the first stages of policy formulation, the DG holding the role of “lead DG”, writes the first legislative draft that presents the basis for all the other negotiations (Hartlapp, Metz, & Rauh, 2013). This role allows the establishment of strong relations with external stakeholders and has a huge pile of key information (Hartlapp, Metz, & Rauh, 2013). Because of these informational advantages, the lead DG can also decide which other DGs can be included in the drafting of the first basic document (Hartlapp, Metz, & Rauh, 2013). In the analysis made by Hartlapp, Metz and Rauh, the majority of lead DGs utilized their informational leverage to include their preferred position to the final Commission proposal (2013). Nevertheless, in the same analysis, the DG holding the lead controls also the number and the pallet of other internal actors that can have a say on its initial legislative draft (Hartlapp, Metz, & Rauh, 2013). When a disagreement takes place with other Directorate-Generals, the lead department can decide if the dispute can be resolved at the administrative or at the political level of the Commission, and it can also choose the context that can lead to the favoured policy outcome (Hartlapp, Metz, & Rauh, 2013).
In addition, some DGs have few chances to steer the policy-making process, or being asked for consultations by other Commission actors (Hartlapp, Metz, & Rauh, 2013). For instance, DG
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GROW1, which is the DG dealing with enterprises, can join in the drafting processes much more often respect to other DGs (Hartlapp, Metz, & Rauh, 2013). Thanks to this analysis, it is proven how unfairly the opportunities to steer the bureaucratic procedures are given across each DG (Hartlapp, Metz, & Rauh, 2013).
Interest of bureaucratic actors can substantially bias the policies’ context that compose the European’s legislative agenda (Hartlapp, Metz, & Rauh, 2013). Rather than accumulating external interests in an instrumental and functional manner, many key decision-makers within the European Commission often pursue bureaucratic objectives (Hartlapp, Metz, & Rauh, 2013). Therefore, they determine the contents of the European’s legislative agenda, and by focusing on bureaucratic spoils, rather than objective knowledge, they can change the substance of relevant policy proposals (Hartlapp, Metz, & Rauh, 2013).
The implication of bureaucratic politics on knowledge use is that:
- Certain policy structures have a much lower possibility of being part of the EU’s legislative agenda;
- Because of Bureaucratic politics, certain DGs and certain Commissioners have higher power respect to others. This leads to the fact that people in a more powerful position respect to others can decide which subject goes further In the legislative agenda because of self-interest reasons rather than rational ones;
- Both in-house and external expertise that the commission uses becomes just a means in order to reach a certain position, rather than a support to a rational decision-making process (Hartlapp, Metz, & Rauh, 2013).
Because of this literary framework, my expectation is that Bureaucratic Politics within the EC, can be the cause of tactical use of critical knowledge, highly influenced by self-interest rather than objective and rational decision-making.
2.2.3 Expertise is biased due to high influence from Member States
As stated above, the Commission is often seen as an organization populated by experts that use knowledge as their main advantage in policy-making (Radaelli, 1999). However, in practice,
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knowledge in the European Commission is subjected to the influence of expertise, industries and societal actors, or national governments (Joerges & Neyer, 1997).
The Commission tries to get information from all the possible stakeholders involved, in order to increase its legitimacy and reduce uncertainty (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2010).
As stated in the first hypothesis, the Commission is structured in a way that strongly facilitates the utilization of external expertise (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2010). The organizational structure of the Commission is composed of certain departments that focus on specific forms of expertise such as DG Economic and Financial Affairs (Christensen, 2015). Nevertheless, these units are more the exception rather than the normality; Commission departments are not places where they try to continuously foster internal expertise (Christensen, 2015). Especially in policy areas that are highly technical, the Commission is highly dependent on crucial information in order to develop effective regulations (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2010). Furthermore, a full picture of critical knowledge over a certain policy is fundamental to have a complete picture of all the feasible political initiatives and solutions in the complex interinstitutional environment in which the Commission works (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2010). Consultation with all the interest groups involved in the implementation of the policy, national officials and scientific experts is essential for the Commission to understand the opinions and the interests of the main parties involved and develop solutions that are considered an advantage for all the actors (Scharpf, 2006). The EC involves national governments into the decision-making process in order to get extra knowledge, but also to promote integration (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2010). Thanks to this, the EC can get to know more about member states’ perspectives and experiences, since the Commission is also dependent on member states in order to implement the majority of the policy at a national level (Morten, 2006).
Gornitzka and Sverdrup in their analysis demonstrate that although experts and other interest groups are essential in expert working groups within the EC, the majority of the Commission’s decision making process is strongly biased from member states (2010). In fact, Governmental officials are not only the main participants in the expert groups: 7/10 expert groups are composed by members from national governments (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2010). The high degree of involvement of member states in expert working groups should be a way to develop an organized connection with governments (Gornitzka & Sverdrup, 2010). However, this high participation could easily lead to manipulation of knowledge by member states in order to
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develop their personal national interests, rather than using knowledge in an objective and instrumental way.
The expectation is that experts knowledge can be biased not only by non-objective expertise and by opinions provided by external interest groups such as businesses, but also by member states actions and interests.
2.3 CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I gave a theoretical framework on the role of expertise in the European Commission, and draw from that the three expectations that can be seen as three causes that led to the EC’s failure as an expert-based policy-maker. The next chapter will present the research design and method adopted for the purpose of this dissertation, as well as outline how data was collected and how I will operationalize my dependent and independent variables.
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Chapter 3: Methodology
In this chapter I am going to explain the research design used within this thesis.
3.1 Research Design: Single Case Study
The selected research design for this dissertation is a single-case study that examines various evidence that led to a particular result. The single-case study design is chosen, because it is the most appropriate for explaining in a comprehensive way a determined outcome of an individual case (Toshkov, 2016).
The main aim of this case is to achieve the research goal, which is to understand what the main reasons are behind the tactical use of expertise by the EC. The choice of this type of research design is motivated by the fact that through an in depth case analysis it is possible to uncover the causal mechanism that led to a certain outcome.
According to Yin, a single case study can be exploratory, descriptive, explanatory or all the three (2009). In this paper the research is explanatory and Y-centered, because the focus is on understanding the causal mechanism that led to a particular empirical outcome through process-tracing. In practical terms, the objective is to understand if the Commission utilization of expertise (DV) can be considered tactical (as its expected) and if the three independent variables can be identified as the main causes that led to a tactical use of expertise.
Figure 1
Tactical
Use of
Expertise
Bureaucratic
Politics
Influence from
Interest Groups
Influence From
Member States
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3.2 Why the diesel-car emission regulation case
The unit of analysis of my research is the role of the EC within the diesel-gate scandal. The case is a so-called “Deviant Case”, a case that shows a highly unusual outcome, a story that challenges the status quo, and shows that things are not often, as they seem (Mills, Durepos, & Wiebe, 2012).
The EC is often seen and described by media as a solely expert based policy-maker, while this case prove the opposite. The European Commission wants to display themselves as a rational decision makers that takes decision based solely on rational decision –making and common sense (Ellinas & Suleiman, 2012). There are not many events that shows that the EC can often fail as an expert based policy maker and utilize expertise not in an instrumental way but in a tactical way. This is due also to the fact, that most of the time what happens at the European level, is not in the spotlight unless the issue is salient for the public (Vassalos, 2013). Luckily, the emission regulation case shows how different factors in action at the same time led to a strategic use of expertise by the EC. Through the empirical analysis of this case, in addition to the theoretical framework described in the first chapter, I will test whether the three explanations (Influence of interest groups, Bureaucratic Politics and Influence of Member states) can all be considered three reasons behind a certain use of expertise (Figure 1).
3.3 Methodology: Process-Tracing
Process-tracing is the method that suits this case the most, because it allows to uncover the causal mechanism through the collection of different evidence. Through a deductive reasoning, I will test various hypothesis until I find the one that can be considered valid (Toshkov, 2016). The research design allows to understand which causal mechanisms can and which cannot lead to the outcome of interest. In our case, the particular outcome is the failure of the EC as an expert-based policy maker. Through the evidence from this case, it is possible to evaluate the competing hypotheses and acquire the goal of this research, which was to understand what was the use of expertise by the EC and what can explain this outcome.
According to Beach & Pedersen (2013), process-tracing is used to understand causal mechanisms in a single-case research design. The most distinguishing difference between process-tracing and other methods for small-n studies, is that with process-tracing causal relationships are detected within the case instead of across cases (Beach & Pedersen, 2013). Three different uses of process-tracing are clarified. Firstly, one can use process tracing as
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case-centric, where the outcome is explained through process-tracing (Beach & Pedersen, 2013). The corresponding question for this use would be: what mechanism explanation accounts for outcome (Y)? The other two uses are theory-centric, in which one is theory testing (Is causal mechanism present and does it function as theorized?), while the other is theory-building (what is the causal mechanism between X and Y?) (Beach & Pedersen, 2013). The first one, that is, what mechanism explanation accounts for the outcome Y, is the one that best fits this research (Beach & Pedersen, 2013). Combining the conceptual framework with the method, this would result in a causality process as portrayed in figure 1. I developed specific expectations about the different stages in the process that led to this certain outcome. First, I expect to find a high interests group presence in the EC expert groups. Secondly, I expect to find a clash in the vision of different DGs toward the implementation of emissions regulation. Thirdly, I expect to find member states’ s representative, in this specific case, that highly influence the outcome of the expert working groups on diesel-car’s emission regulation. The variables related to this figure shall be further explained in the following paragraph, the operationalisation of the variables.
3.4 Data Collection
My research is a qualitative study, it focuses on why a deviant case led to a certain outcome. The analysis is based over evidence provided by official documents realised voluntary or by request from the European Commission, The European Parliament, various newspapers and European Union observatories. I collected the main documents regarding my specific case first looking into the Communication and Information Resource Centre for Administrations, Businesses and Citizens of the EC (CIRCAB). In this database, you can find all the documents related to the main activities that happens at the European Commission, for any DGs. All the minutes of critical meetings, administrative materials, participant of the EC and EP working groups are present in this database. Unfortunately, some sensitive documents were not available to the public, which is why I could not rely only on documents present on the official EC and EP databases. As stated above the European Union Observatory and important newspapers such as the Guardian and the Financial Times, requested to the EC to release many sensitive documents to the public. Those documents were crucial to have a better understanding of the timeline of events, relationship between different DGs and the JRC and what were the main
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member states actions during relevant closed meetings. Part of these documents include mails exchange between DG GROW and DG ENV; Official Letters exchange between Antonio Tajani (Former Vice-President of DG GROW) and Janez Potocnik ( Former Member of DG ENV). In addition, to those documents, the EP carried out an inquiry since 2015 on emissions measurement regulation, thanks to which further documents such as strategic working group minutes, answers from key commissioners to questionnaire from the EP and member states positions over this matter, have been accessible and provided critical information to this research.
I decided to utilize working with documents as a research method, rather than interviews for several reasons. Firstly, the topic is politically sensible, therefore, interviews to key actors on the topic would have not received completely objective answers especially if not done by official authorities. Furthermore, the European Parliament has already held questionnaire to three key actors2 regarding their role and actions in the diesel-car emission regulation case. Secondly, the documents provide objective proof of what have happened in the past and this helps me into re-building the main facts and event that led to a specific outcome. Thirdly, the EC has not been transparent over the commission personnel that has been involved in this specific case, and this would have made it even harder to understand which personalities to interview in order to uncover the causal mechanism that led to a certain outcome.
2.5 Operationalization
This research is composed by one dependent variable, use of expertise, and three independent variables: interest groups influence (IV1), bureaucratic politics (IV2), decision-makers with a generalist background (IV2).
In order to measure the dependent variable (DV), use of expertise, I am going to use the framework of knowledge utilization described by Schrefler (2010). This framework is composed by four types of knowledge use: rational, this approach is based on the fact that once there is a policy problem, knowledge is the best tool in order to solve it ; symbolic that derives from the desire of an International body to gain legitimacy with external stakeholders; tactical, it is usually used in order to increase the political or reputation power of the international body in order to strengthen its position in certain matters; “non use “of expertise, this kind, could
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be used in order to protect its policy proposal against evidence that clearly contradicts it, or in order to avoid taking an explicit stance against a salient policy problem (Schrefler, 2010). In my case the expectation is that, there has been a tactical use of knowledge. In order to measure knowledge utilization I am going use the framework of tactical use that Boswell created (2008). She proved that in order for knowledge to be used in a tactical way by policy makers this three things need to happen. Firstly, structure and substance of research are used or twisted in favour of the policy maker opinion (Boswell, 2008). Secondly, there are some exchange between decision-makers and research unit (Boswell, 2008). Thirdly, there is a selected interest in openly discuss about the knowledge utilized (Boswell, 2008).
To measure IV1, I am going to measure how many interest groups are present within all the meetings of the working group on emission regulations, and if they managed to influence the timeline of the implementation of new diesel-car emission regulation.
To measure IV2, I am going to analyse the degree of conflict between DGs thanks to the analysis of letters correspondence, mails exchange and notes between different DGs.
Last but not least, to measure IV3, I will analyse the actions of all the member states involved in the working groups for emission regulations. I will analyse, if their actions influenced the commissions’ creation and implementation of diesel-car emission regulation.
3.6 Common Threats to Inference
Single-case studies are the best fit for understanding causality (Toshkov, 2016). The single case study can identify causal mechanisms and eliminate alternative explanations thanks to the use of a within-case analysis (Toshkov, 2016, p. 282).
The main threats to a single case analysis are: firstly, reversed causality and secondly, possible alternative explanations. These threats will be limited by utilizing process tracing as a methodology and by backing up all the expectations with a strong theoretical framework. This process allows to identify the causal mechanisms of the outcome of interest (Toshkov, 2016, p.298), and also guide the researcher to discover the causal links and chain that to acertain outcome.
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3.7 Conclusion
In the next chapter, I am going to describe the empirical case, the main findings and conduct the analysis of the case that will lead to the acceptance or refusal of my expectations.
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Chapter 4: Analysis
4.1 Diesel Car Emission Regulation Case Description:
In November 2006 during a meeting at the Volkswagen Headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, high-level managers were planning how to build in their diesel cars illegal software devices that can understand when an emission test is going on and avoid pollution controls (nytimes, 2017). At the end of 2008, Volkswagen started a massive “clean diesel” marketing campaign in the United States, positioning its more successful models such as Golfs and Jeeps as the most environmentally friendly alternatives to hybrid models such as Toyota Prius (nytimes, 2017). After 5 years, in 2013 a research team from West Virginia University won a $70,000 scholarship from the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) to study and practically test if diesel cars produced more pollutants during on the road driving rather than during laboratory tests (nytimes, 2017). During this testing, the researchers discover that two Volkswagen cars emitted far more nitrogen oxides (NOx) than permitted by the law (nytimes, 2017). The study sponsored by the ICCT was finally published and after the publication, in May 2014, a trouble shooter warned Volkswagen top managers that the US government would start an investigation on whether the car maker had been involved in the creation of a defeat device (nytimes, 2017). In fact, after a couple of months, the California air Resources Board, or C.A.R.B., opened an inquiry that would investigate further on why the Volkswagen cars had such an excess in emissions in normal driving conditions, thanks to the West Virginia study (nytimes, 2017). At the beginning of the investigations, Volkswagen managers and engineers tried to hide their illegal actions by providing false and modified data to the regulators in charge of the investigation (nytimes, 2017). The car company later admitted that during their plea agreement (nytimes, 2017). One year later, in 2015, Volkswagen tried to improve their position by telling the regulators in charge of the inquiry that a new updated software would adjust the excessive emissions (nytimes, 2017). However, the new tests showed a very insignificant improvement, which is why C.A.R.B. decided not only to continue the investigations but also to intensify its inquiry (nytimes, 2017). As the investigations got more and more intense, Volkswagen management got rid of thousands of crucial incriminating documents, and admitted doing so in court later on (nytimes, 2017). Finally on 5th September 2015, Volkswagen admitted to the Environmental Protection Agency and C.A.R.B. that its diesel cars were equipped with a complex defeat-device software able to understand when emission tests were
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taking place and limit them, so that cars would pass these tests (nytimes, 2017). The official news about Volkswagen started in Spetember 19th 2015 when the public learnt about the emissions fraud (nytimes, 2017). In June 2016, Volkswagen decided to settle for a $14.7 billion fee in an agreement with the United States Government (nytimes, 2017). In September 2016, a long time Volkswagen engineer admitted that he was guilty of conspiring for fraud to regulators (nytimes, 2017).
In January 2017, in an agreement with the United States Justice Department, Volkswagen admitted to be guilty for fraud to the United States government and for violating the Clean Air Act (nytimes, 2017). The settlement was followed immediately by a $4.3 billion fine (nytimes, 2017). The total cost to Volkswagen of the scandal in the United States is more than $21 billion (nytimes, 2017). In March 2017, the new Volkswagen chief executive said in a press conference that the fraud was, involving low management employees and the current management board was not aware of it (nytimes, 2017).
After this overview it might seem that the scandal was just involving the US, however it spread to a big number of European countries as well as Canada and South Korea. The UK, Italy, France, South Korea, Canada and, of course, Germany (bbc, 2015). VW had to retake 8.5 million cars in Europe, including 2.4 million in Germany,1.2 million in the UK, and 500,000 in the US (bbc, 2015).
The consequences are not only economical. In the autumn of 2015 a study released by public health researchers from Harvard and MIT discovered that 59 Americans will die earlier because of the excess pollution caused by Volkswagen (Barret, 2015). In addition, the health consequences in Europe are even worse because more than half of the cars on European roads are diesels, while in the US these are just three percent (Barret, 2015).
It is reasonable to ask why the European Union, and in particular the EC that have always been seen as the leader in the fight against climate change and environmental regulations, did not know that a huge automotive multinational was avoiding laboratory emission tests, causing disastrous health and environmental consequences all over the world. That is why it is useful to look back in the past and understand what was going on within the Commission regarding emission regulations while in the US research was being done on diesel emissions and very specific investigations on this topic were going on.
In the next paragraph, I am going to analyse the role of the EC in the process of creating emission regulations in the automotive sector. Trying to understand why if the EC in-house
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expertise, the Joint Research Center (JRC) had a report that showed diesel emissions on the road were much higher than what allowed by law; why did the EC fail to translate expertise into more concrete actions, just like the United States had done.
Volkswagen diesel-gate scandal timeline
2006
VW plans the illegal defeat devices.
2008
VW starts a campaign to position its diesel cars as very environmental friendly.
2013
A study from West Virginia University demonstrates that VW Diesel Cars emit much more NOx on the road than in the laboratory tests.
2014
C.A.R.B opens an inquiry into the emission excess discovered by the study from West Virginia University.
2015
Volkswagen confesses to the E.P.A. and C.A.R.B that it had been using defeat devices to avoid the NOx emissions limits.29
4.2 The use of expertise by the European Commission in the diesel-car
emission regulation case
In 2011, the Joint Research Centre discovered that there was something wrong in the real emissions of diesel cars. According to the JRC report, there was a large disparity between the NOx emissions of the majority of light duty vehicles (Euro 3 and 6) diesel cars that were measured during the official laboratory test (also called: New European Driving Cycle, NEDC) and the emission performance of the same cars in real driving conditions (2011). The NOx emissions measurement of these diesel cars, during the NEDC test, respected the limit imposed by the law (JRC, 2011). However, the NOx emissions performance of the same diesel cars on the road in real driving conditions were far higher than the law limit (JRC, 2011). In addition, even if they did not have the same pollution and health consequences as the NOx emissions, there are also relevant discrepancies in the diesel cars emissions of CO2 and fuel consumption between NEDC tests and on the road tests (JRC, 2011).
Those performance differences came from most of the biggest car manufacturers, not only the Volkswagen vehicles that were found out avoiding the legal emission standard thanks to the use of defeat devices (JRC, 2016; nytimes, 2017).
The Commission, many member states and many other stakeholders knew about those discrepancies and their huge negative impact on meeting the air quality standards, since 2004-2005 (European Parliament, 2017). They had knowledge about it because that data had been confirmed by two reports of the European Commission in-house expertise, the Joint Research Centre since 2010-2011 and other studies since 2004 (European Parliament, 2017). Before September 2015, when the Volkswagen scandal came to be known to the public, those higher NOx emissions were justified by the weakness of the NEDC laboratory test, which was not adequately representative of the real-world emissions (European Parliament, 2017).
It is fair to question why the European Commission, despite knowing since 2011 about those emissions discrepancies, namely two years before the report that initiated the investigation against VW had been released, did not manage to discover the use of defeat devices earlier than the United States. I decided to take a step back and try to understand what actually happened since the JRC discoveries were known to the Commission, what were the main actions of the EC and what were the main elements that blocked a more fair use of expertise.
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4.2.1 The JRC role in the Diesel Car Emission Regulation Case
As already stated in this paper, in 2010, the Joint Research Centre reported that there were massive differences between how diesel cars emissions of NOx (very powerful and unhealthy gas) perform in official laboratory tests and the emission performance of the same cars on the road, in real driving conditions (JRC, 2011).
On 23rd November 2010, the JRC presented its results on the discrepancies between diesel car emissions in laboratory tests and on the road during a workshop organized by DG Environment and DG Enterprise open to all the stakeholders (JRC, 2016). The JRC work on this report started in 2007 and analysed twelve Euro 3, 4 and 5 vehicles and finished in 2010 (JRC, 2016). While emissions of many pollutants overall remained below the law’s emission limit, the NOx emissions of diesel cars were double the limit allowed by regulations (JRC, 2011). Unfortunately, the car manufacturers involved could not be disclosed at the time, but they were declared to the public on the 13th November 2015, after the Volkswagen scandal was discovered in the United States (JRC, 2016).
A year later, during the workshop where the JRC presented its study showed that there was a big issue regarding diesel cars emission performance (JRC, 2016). Especially taking into account the fact that NOx gases were a threat for human health3. DG GROW, who is also the DG responsible for the creation of emission regulations, set up an expert working group called “Real Drive Emission-Light Duty Vehicle Working Group” (RDE-LDV working group) (JRC, 2011). The main objectives of this working group were to develop an additional test procedure that makes sure that emissions of all the pollutants are controlled under the real driving conditions of light-duty vehicles (JRC, 2016). By analysing the composition of the working group in the European Commission website, we can observe that the working group is composed by member state representatives, automotive businesses, business associations, NGOs and Trade Unions (ec.europa.eu, 2012). It is a duty of the Commission to ensure that there is a balanced representation of different stakeholders in the working group (European Parliament, 2017). However, if we look at the members of the working group we can see that car companies composed more than half of the participants in the working group4.
3 “MIT researchers estimate that 1,200 people in Europe will die early, each losing as much as a decade of their life, as
a result of excess emissions generated between 2008 and 2015 by affected cars sold in Germany. Of these premature deaths, 500 will likely occur in Germany, meaning that more than 60 percent of premature mortalities stemming from those German-sold cars will occur in neighboring countries, most notably Poland, France, and the Czech Republic” http://news.mit.edu/2017/volkswagen-emissions-premature-deaths-europe-0303.
