EU car adverts to carry cigarette-type health warnings

The European Union is considering steps to force car manufacturers to display information about greenhouse gas emissions and petrol consumption of vehicles in magazine, television and billboard advertising.

Currently under discussion, the European Commission is expected to unveil the new rules by the end of the month.

The commission has opted to move on car advertising following almost a decade in which manufacturers have widely flouted a 1999 directive on publicising the environmental impact of different vehicles.

At this time, the EU stopped short of regulating car advertising but introduced the guidelines on car emissions and petrol consumption.

The 1999 directive required that adverts include information that is "easily legible and no less pronounced than the main part of the advertising message" and "easily understood, even when read briefly."

But in many cases the environmental information stretches only a few millimetres high and is barely legible.

Inspired by cigarette packs

The European Parliament got the ball rolling last October by calling for measures to ensure "that a minimum of 20 percent of the space devoted to the promotion of new cars through advertising, marketing literature, or point-of-sale displays in showrooms, should provide information on fuel economy and CO2 emissions."

Car companies and member state representatives will have a chance to discuss details of the commission's legal proposal with EU officials on 5 June, but they are likely to react with varying degrees of dismay at the new rules, which were inspired by the practice of publicising health risks on cigarette packs.

German media conglomerates have already slammed the idea, German magazine Der Spiegel reports. With as much as 20 percent of their advertising revenues coming from car ads, magazine and newspaper publishers are worried that car companies will take their advertising elsewhere – to sporting events perhaps – just as tobacco firms did when tobacco advertising began to be curtailed by national regulations in the 1990s.

German car makers, who produce a high proportion of the gas-guzzling cars that are the main target of the proposals, are also preparing to launch a counter-offensive.

'Driving cars kills polar bears!'

Inside Brussels itself, Germany's industry commissioner Gunter Verheugen has already blasted the idea.

"This is enough now. Fingers off advertising! Advertising belongs to the free-market," he said in an interview with German newspaper Bild am Sonntag (11 May). "I can imagine how it will look in the end: expanding the advertising surface area with the warnings to 50 percent [and saying:] 'Driving cars kills polar bears!'"

But French and Italian companies, who generally produce lighter, smaller cars that use less petrol, are likely to welcome the commission's plan. Meanwhile, environmental campaigners have already hailed the proposed new measures.

"Ninety nine percent of car adverts published in newspapers and magazines and on roadside hoardings in the European Union are illegal, because they fail to comply with [the 1999] European Directive," a coalition of European green groups, Advertise CO2!, says.

"Have a look for yourself: try to find this information on a car ad. If you look hard enough you will find it - displayed in tiny letters," the coalition adds. "In practice, the fuel consumption and CO2 emissions are virtually impossible to read without a magnifying glass."