The Retail Motor Industry Federation (RMI) has warned that a strengthening of European Union (EU) minimum road-worthiness test standards could widen tests carried out under the UK’s MoT.

In a comprehensive upgrade, the EU Council of Ministers agreed that “modern electronic systems be included in the list of items to be tested.”

This change and others will have to be introduced by December 2011.

The changes will not yet involve a compulsory electronic diagnostic, with testers plugging into a car’s systems and checking computing functions and micro-chips, but RMI MoT chairman John Ball says this will come eventually: “Electronic systems will have to be tested at some point”.

However, the latest EU-mandated changes insist on checking electronic stability control systems, anti-theft devices, electrical connections on tow bars, and a rather vague insistence on checking “electromagnetic interference suppression”.

Ball said the changes would increase the cost of the MoT.