Commission report on fuel qualities in Member States

Publication date: 28 April 2006

The European Commission published today its annually report (COM(2006) 186 final) on the fuel quality and the volumes sold in the different Member States for the reporting year 2004.

com2006_186_fuel_quality_report.pdf (218 KB)

The monitoring shows that the specifications for petrol and diesel laid down in Directive 98/70/EC are in general met and few violations were identified. However, both the Czech Republic and Poland reported significant numbers of samples exceeding limit values.

For the abatement of air pollution and the introduction of new engine technology it is important to note that the share of <10 ppm and <50 ppm sulphur fuels increased significantly from 2001 to 2004 for EU-15. EU-10 sulphur content is significantly higher and this leads to a slight increase in average sulphur between 2003 and 2004 for the whole EU.