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As a result of recent lobbying the European Commission has agreed to provide funding for physical compliance testing to confirm the validity of tyre manufactures’ performance labels. Several millions of euros have been assigned to this project with brand selection and testing being carried out in the second half of this year.

We in ITMA have long argued for better and more consistent levels of compliance right across the EU so this exercise has our cautious support. However, we have severe concerns over the manner in which brands are selected for testing which should be genuinely random, something not always the case in the past. We are also concerned about traceability.

With so many tyres of all brands entering the EU via the ‘parallel’ market it is important that the agency appointed to conduct these tests takes steps to ascertain the provenance of the tyres purchased for evaluation. Tyres imported into Europe via third parties will not have been intended for sale here so may well not meet Europe’s regulations or requirements. This is something over which manufactures have relatively little control so ITMA will be lobbying hard to ensure this is well understood by the Commission and be properly accounted for in the selection, testing and outcome evaluation.