NGOs & Transport Businesses Call for Maintaining Remote Sensing Provisions in the Roadworthiness Package

Removing clear targets for the use of remote sensing would severely undermine its air quality benefits.

Dear TRAN MEPs,

In April 2025, the European Commission published its proposal to revise the EU Roadworthiness Package, which introduced binding requirements for Member States to use remote sensing technology to screen vehicle emissions and noise.

The undersigned organisations and groups are deeply concerned about the weakening of these provisions in the current EP amendments, which now aim to remove screening targets and delete core enforcement provisions.

Remote sensing is a proven, mature and scalable technology that enables authorities to detect high emitting vehicles under real driving conditions – something traditional testing often fails to do. These vehicles represent 1 to 5% of the fleet while being responsible for 30% of NOx emissions, thus making them hard to detect during blind inspections. Pilot projects of remote sensing deployment have shown that this technology increases detection success rates from a random roadside check’s 2% to over 50%, i.e. making them ~25 times more efficient. Scaling this technology up via more screening and as a consequence extremely efficient roadside inspections would bring tremendous administrative relief and public health improvement.

Furthermore, remote sensing allows European citizens to verify that their vehicles are operating well within regulatory norms while simultaneously safeguarding public health. 19 million diesel vehicles in Europe still emit suspiciously high levels of pollutants, likely using prohibited defeat devices uncovered by the Dieselgate scandal. 81,000 premature deaths are still estimated to occur between now and 2040 as a result of that in the EU + UK if nothing is done. Finally, the development of this sector bolsters European competitiveness, as EU companies are world leaders in remote sensing technology.

To summarise, removing clear targets or minimum deployment rates for the use of this technology for fleet screening and roadside inspections would severely undermine air quality benefits and therefore fail to protect citizens’ health. The lack of such targets would reduce the deployment of an important tool able to seriously improve air quality towards the already adopted 2030 targets.

Member States may face practical challenges in scaling up remote sensing, but this should not justify the removal of minimum deployment targets. We call on TRAN MEPs to adopt a balanced approach that would consist of:

1) Maintaining mandatory deployment level, and letting Member States choose which enforcement actions to take;

2) Adopting a progressive roll-out of remote sensing, with minimum deployment rates increasing over time;

3) Combining this with incentives allowing reduced roadside inspection quotas once effective remote sensing systems are in place.

Signatories:

BEUC, Clean Cities, ClientEarth, European Environmental Bureau, T&E, Transport Alliance for Clean Air.

Download the letter.