The car manufacturing industry has been accused of ‘aggressive’ lobbying and making ‘unsubstantiated’ claims to derail EU plans to cut pollution from road transport

The briefing paper, ‘The seven (dirty) air pollution tricks of the auto industry’, warns that the industry is trying to turn the public and governments against Euro 7 standards, by whipping up fears that new standards will cripple sales and threaten jobs.

Euro 7 will set legal limits for nearly 100 million petrol and diesel cars sold in the EU after 2025 when it comes into force, according to the report's authors at clean transport campaign group Transport & Environment (T&E).

T&E warned that citizens’ health will suffer for decades if the industry succeeds in ‘watering down’ proposed new standards on emissions from cars, vans, buses, and trucks.

Anna Krajinska, emissions engineer at T&E, said: “Affordable technology can now deliver huge cuts in vehicle emissions for less than the price of a paint upgrade for an average car. This is a unique opportunity to make air safer to breathe across Europe.