Translation of "Véhicule de transport adapté " (French → English) :

This Directive requires the inclusion of operational lifetime costs of energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and pollutant emissions as award criteria in the procurement of road transport vehicles, including the retrofitting of such vehicles with engines and replacement parts, by contracting authorities or contracting entities within the meaning of Directives 2004/17/EC and 2004/18/EC or as criteria for the purchase of such vehicles by operators under contract, licence, permit or authorisation granted by public authorities, in order to promote clean and energy-efficient vehicles.

This Directive requires the inclusion of operational lifetime costs of energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and pollutant emissions as award criteria in the procurement of road transport vehicles, by contracting authorities or contracting entities within the meaning of Directives 2004/17/EC and 2004/18/EC or as criteria for the purchase of such vehicles by operators under contract, licence, permit or authorisation granted by public authorities, in order to promote clean and energy efficient vehicles.

4. Aid for retrofitting operations of existing transport vehicles with an environmental protection objective shall be exempted if the existing means of transport are upgraded to environmental standards that were not yet in force at the date of entry into operation of those means of transport or if the means of transport are not subject to any environmental standards.

In view of the sufficient experience gathered in the application of the Community guidelines on State aid for environmental protection, investment aid enabling undertakings to go beyond Community standards for environmental protection or increase the level of environmental protection in the absence of Community standards, aid for the acquisition of transport vehicles which go beyond Community standards or which increase the level of environmental protection in the absence of Community standards, aid for early adaptation to future Community ...[+++] standards by SMEs, environmental aid for investment in energy saving, environmental aid for investment in high efficiency cogeneration, environmental aid for investments to promote renewable energy sources including investment aid relating to sustainable biofuels, aid for environmental studies and certain aid in the form of reductions in environmental taxes should be exempt from the notification requirement.

The vehicle kilometres travelled by HGVs may for this purpose be adjusted by objectively justified "equivalence factors" such as those set out in point 4 .

Also, we give our full backing to the rapporteur’s proposals to cut CO2 emissions so that we can achieve the Kyoto objectives, but also to the tax incentives for adapting older vehicles and the adjustment of test conditions, so that actual emissions of vehicles in use can be measured, albeit in the longer term.