Isolated car manufacturers? The political positions of the automotive industry on the real driving emissions regulation

Abstract

The real driving emissions regulation will have several critical consequences for the European diesel market. The catalyst technologies needed to comply are costly, both for car manufacturers and for consumers, and are difficulty to implement in diesel small cars. However, the automotive firms are stakeholders in the political negotiations in the European Union. To tackle this apparent contradiction, we study the corporate stakeholders' positions on the real driving emissions regulation through the analysis of the hearings held at the European Parliament between 2016 and 2017. After describing the catalysts value chains and the European governance of the air pollutants standards, we highlight the differences between firms' representatives' positions through the lens of the dependence of actors to diesel market and embeddedness of the air pollutant regulations in the broader European policy. We conclude that stakeholders ask both for a tightening of standards and policies to support diesel or new energies engines markets. That leads to general considerations about the capture phenomenon in a theoretical meso-institutional framework.