Table 76: Analysis table policy options dedicated requirements for gaseous alternative fuels and other non-traditional propulsions

ANNEX XIV: Details chapter 6 — options comparison and conclusions Simplification of the legislation

The positive point in option 1,’no policy change’ is that no risk of loss in quality of requirements would be introduced by replacing provisions of EU Directives by references to international standards. A negative side of option 1 is that the concerns for manufacturers and administrations will remain, which is not in line with the Better Regulation objective. Continuing this approach would thus add unnecessary administrative burden on stakeholders. To reply to the concerns about a weakening of requirements, it is intended that references will only be proposed in cases where the international standards are at least equal to the relevant EU Directives.

By moving from directives to the legislative instrument of regulations, option 2 would do away with the need for transposition on the side of Member States and the need for transposition control on the side of the Commission, as this continues to be the case for options 1 and 3. Hence, all discrepancies between national transposition acts would be avoided. In addition, today the Commission services work on their own documents and on those from UNECE, etc. It would be much more efficient and more cost-effective for the representatives of Member States and also for the Commission services if the technical details were no longer duplicated in different set of legislations.

With the introduction of the split-level approach, the Council and Parliament can concentrate on the most important and perhaps controversial issues that require political debate and agreement, while delegating technical and administrative details to the Commission without losing control. The regulatory procedure with scrutiny would be the applicable comitology procedure, which ensures final control of the co-legislators also for comitology acts. Additional advantages of options 2 and 3 compared to option 1 are that the legislation will be simplified by suppressing useless duplications and that the fast developments in technical progress, possible new or revised environmental and safety measures can be smoothly integrated, while executing the simplification exercise. In terms of cost benefit is option 2 superior to option 3, as the cost for national transposition and surveillance of compliance cost will not apply.

In conclusion the advantages of option 2 outweigh by far its disadvantages and are more beneficial than choosing for options 1 or 3. Therefore the preferred option would be to simplify the legislation by introducing a co-decision Regulation with a limited number of implementing Regulations through Comitology, using as much as possible the standards available from UNECE, CEN/CENELEC and ISO.