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    • EU ‘twists Korea’s arm’ over fuel standards

    The EU has pushed for – and secured – a relaxation in South Korea’s car efficiency standards in order to allow a wide-ranging EU-Korean trade agreement to be completed.

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    [mailchimp_signup][/mailchimp_signup]The trade deal is described as the most far-reaching bilateral free trade deal ever signed by the EU, but European car makers had been unhappy with a Korean plan for new fuel efficiency and carbon dioxide limits for new cars that would have been equivalent to 150g of CO2 per kilometre. Those standards have now been relaxed, but Green MEPs voted against the trade deal saying the EU had ‘twisted Korea’s arm’ over the relaxation. T&E director Jos Dings said: ‘There is a terrible irony here – it was the original EU voluntary agreement to limit CO2 emissions to 140g by 2009 that got South Korea reducing its emissions, and now the EU has put pressure on Korea to relax standards it helped establish.’