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The Court of Justice sets aside the judgment of the General Court partially annulling the Commission regulation fixing emission values for real driving emissions tests for new light vehicles. Since the cities of Paris, Brussels and Madrid are not directly concerned by that regulation, their actions seeking its annulment must be dismissed as inadmissible By adopting Directive 2007/46, 1 the EU legislature established a harmonised framework for the approval of motor vehicles in order to facilitate their registration, sale and entry into service in the European Union.

In the context of the ‘Dieselgate’ scandal, the European Commission set up a procedure for testing the real driving emissions (‘RDE’) 2 of light passenger and commercial vehicles, approved in accordance with the applicable legislation, 3 in order better to reflect the emissions measured on the road. The requirements for the RDE tests were subsequently supplemented by Commission Regulation 2016/646, 4 which sets limit values for emissions of oxides of nitrogen which must not be exceeded during those tests (‘the contested regulation’).

The City of Paris, the City of Brussels and the Municipality of Madrid (‘the respondents’) each brought an action for annulment of the regulation at issue, in so far as it prevented them from imposing restrictions on the circulation of passenger vehicles in relation to their pollutant emissions. The Commission raised objections of inadmissibility against the abovementioned actions, alleging that the regulation at issue was not of direct concern to the applicant cities within the meaning of the fourth paragraph of Article 263 TFEU.