The vehicle inspection industry is part of Swetic, which is the trade association for companies that work with testing, inspection, control and certification of vehicles. Vehicle inspectors are reacting strongly to the Swedish Transport Agency's new rules.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Environmental controls are already inadequate today. The Swedish Transport Agency and the government have had the opportunity to improve them, but now the authority is instead coming forward with proposals that strongly oppose Sweden's ambitions in the climate and environmental areas, says Tord Fornander, chairman of the Swedish Vehicle Inspection Industry.<\/p>\n
The authority's regulations for vehicle inspections are to be updated. The proposal includes, among other things, changed emission limits. It concerns the levels of emissions of, among other things, particles that should be allowed when inspecting cars and how these deviations should be measured. The rules will come into effect on 20 May and the changes affect just over 966,000 passenger cars, 233,000 light trucks and 41,000 heavy vehicles - a total of around 1.2 million vehicles.<\/p>\n
\u2013 The proposal means that cars that emit far more than what is permitted when the cars are sold will now instead be allowed to pass the inspection, Fornander continues.<\/p>\n
The vehicle inspectors believe that the Swedish Transport Agency seems to have misunderstood the EU's new directive on inspection and that it is therefore not at all necessary to change the rules so that they allow more emissions from Swedish cars than what is allowed today. Germany, Finland, Poland and Romania are countries that are now taking action to ensure that inspection contributes to reducing road traffic emissions through stricter limit values and more accurate environmental control, while Sweden seems to be taking a completely different path than the rest of the EU.<\/p>\n
\u2013 We question why Sweden should be the worst in the class at controlling that cars do not emit too much. We wonder why the government and especially the Green Party want Sweden to be worse than, for example, Poland and Romania at controlling this. It is entirely possible for Sweden to take the lead in environmental and climate work, but it seems to have chosen a completely different path in this case, concludes Tord Fornander.<\/p>\n