Abstract
The paper sets the reform of the Clean Vehicles Directive in the broader context of the European environmental policies and inclusion these horizontal policies into public procurement rules. The analysis of effectiveness of that directive is provided from the overall Europe-an point of view as well as from the point of view of examples of transposition and different approaches to transposition in the Member States. The Clean Vehicles Directive underwent substantial reform in 2019 which removed case-by-case assessment of environmental impacts of particular vehicles and introduced new approach by setting minimum quantitative criteria for procurement of 'clean' vehicles. Limited scope of the directive aligned to the thresholds of application of the public procurement directives, remained.
Highlights
The paper sets the reform of the Clean Vehicles Directive in the broader context of the European environmental policies and inclusion these horizontal policies into public procurement rules
In 2019 this regime was abandoned by setting procurement targets for “clean” vehicles, the main shortcoming of this reform is, again, its limited scope aligned to the scope of public procurement directives, ignoring procurement activities under these thresholds
The Reformed Clean Vehicles Directive is less focused on the terms and conditions within the public procurement, so it is less a “public procurement” directive
Summary
The full title of the Clean Vehicles Directive 2009 (Directive 2009/33/ EC) was “on the promotion of clean and energy-efficient road transport vehicles”, according to Art. 1 it focused only on one means of promotion of “clean vehicles”, i.e. via GPP. The restricted subject-matter of the directive is one of its weaknesses, i.e. it is applicable merely on public procurement, which value is not less than thresholds set for the application of public procurement directives (Art. 4 Directive 2014/24/EU) Since this threshold is currently 144.000 euros (Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/2365) and it is hardly applicable on purchases of single cars and applies on purchases of certain number of cars, or bus or heavy-duty vehicles. The operational and environmental impacts can be taken into consideration either (a) by setting technical specifications for energy and environmental performance (or other impacts) in the documentation for the purchase (Art. 5(3)(a) Directive 2009/33/EC), or (b) by including energy and environmental impacts in the purchasing decision (Art. 5(3) (b) Directive 2009/33/EC) This optional harmonisation appears to be another weakness of the directive. The life-cycle costs calculation was not mandatory for vehicle purchases, in general
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