The Commission is required, pursuant to Article 8(6) of Regulation (EU) No 510/2011, to confirm or amend each year the average specific emissions of CO₂ and the specific emissions target for each manufacturer of light commercial vehicles in the Union. On that basis, the Commission is to determine whether manufacturers and pools of manufacturers formed in accordance with Article 7(1) of that Regulation have complied with their specific emissions targets in accordance with Article 4 of that Regulation.

Pursuant to Article 4 of Regulation (EU) No 510/2011 the average specific emissions of manufacturers for 2014 are calculated in accordance with the third paragraph of that Article and take into account 70 % of the manufacturer's new light commercial vehicles registered in that year.

The detailed data to be used for the calculation of the average specific emissions and the specific emissions targets is set out in point 1 of Part A and Part C of Annex II to Regulation (EU) No 510/2011 and is based on Member States' registrations of new light commercial vehicles during the preceding calendar year.

Where light commercial vehicles are type-approved in a multi-stage process, point 7 of Part B of Annex II to Regulation (EU) No 510/2011 requires that the manufacturer of the base vehicle take responsibility for the CO₂ emissions of the completed vehicle.

The 2014 data were submitted to the Commission by the time-limit of 28 February 2015 in accordance with Article 8(2) of Regulation (EU) No 510/2011 by a majority of the Member States. Where, as a result of the verification of the data by the Commission, it was evident that certain data were missing or manifestly incorrect, the Commission contacted the Member States concerned and, subject to the agreement of those Member States, adjusted or completed the data accordingly. Where no agreement could be reached with a Member State, the provisional data of that Member State were not adjusted.

On 13 May 2015, the Commission published the provisional data and notified 64 manufacturers of the provisional calculations of their average specific emissions of CO₂ in 2014 and their specific emissions targets in accordance with Article 8(4) of Regulation (EU) No 510/2011. Manufacturers were asked to verify the data and to notify the Commission of any errors within 3 months of receipt of the notification in accordance with the Article 8(5) of that Regulation. 23 manufacturers submitted notifications of errors.

For the remaining 41 manufacturers that did not notify any errors in the datasets or respond otherwise, the provisional data and provisional calculations of the average specific emissions and the specific emissions targets should be confirmed without adjustments.

The Commission has verified the corrections notified by the manufacturers and the respective justifications and the datasets have been adjusted as appropriate.

In the case of records without matching vehicle identification numbers and with missing or incorrect identification parameters, such as type, variant, version code or type-approval number, the fact that manufacturers cannot verify or correct those records should be taken into account. As a consequence, it is appropriate to apply an error margin to the CO₂ emissions and mass values in those records.

The error margin should be calculated as the difference between the distances to the specific emissions target expressed as the specific emissions targets subtracted from the average emissions calculated including and excluding those registrations that cannot be verified by the manufacturers. Regardless of whether that difference is positive or negative, the error margin should always improve the manufacturer's position with regard to its specific emission target.

In accordance with Article 10(2) of Regulation (EU) No 510/2011, a manufacturer should be considered as compliant with its specific emission target referred to in Article 4 of that Regulation where the average emissions indicated in this Decision are lower than the specific emissions target, expressed as a negative distance to target. Where the average emissions exceed the specific emissions target, an excess emission premium are to be imposed in accordance with Article 9 of Regulation (EU) No 510/2011, unless the manufacturer concerned benefits from an exemption from that target in accordance with Article 2(4) or Article 11 of that Regulation or is a member of a pool in accordance with Article 7 of that Regulation and the pool complies with its specific emissions target.

Following a statement by the Volkswagen Group on 3 November 2015 that irregularities were found when determining type approval CO₂ levels of some of their vehicles, the average specific emissions of CO₂ and the specific emissions targets should not be confirmed for the Volkswagen pool and its members until further clarification is provided by the Volkswagen Group. As a consequence the Volkswagen pool and its members (Audi AG, Dr Ing. h.c.F. Porsche AG, Quattro GmbH, Seat S.A., Skoda Auto A.S., and Volkswagen AG) should not be subject to this Decision.

The average specific emissions of CO₂ from new light commercial vehicles registered in 2014, the specific emissions targets and the difference between those two values should be confirmed or amended accordingly,