Clean Vehicles Directive

• Clean Vehicles Directive


  European Commission directive that promotes clean mobility solutions in public procurement tenders, providing a solid boost to the demand and further deployment of low- and zero-emission vehicles
• The new Directive defines "clean vehicles" and sets national targets for their public procurement
• The Directive applies to cars, vans, trucks and buses (excluding coaches), when they are procured through purchase, lease, rent or hire-purchase contracts under obligations by EU public procurement rules, public service contracts for the provision of passenger road transport services, and services contracts for public road transport services, special-purpose road passenger-transport services, non-scheduled passenger transport, refuse collection services, mail and parcel transport and delivery
• Clean light-duty vehicle


  Any car or van meeting emission thresholds of no more than 50g/km CO2 and up to 80% of applicable real driving emission (RDE) limits for NOx and PN until 31 December 2025, and only zero-emission vehicles from 1 January 2026
• Clean heavy-duty vehicle


  Any truck or bus using one of the following alternative fuels: hydrogen, battery electric (including plug-in hybrids), natural gas (both CNG and LNG, including biomethane), liquid biofuels, synthetic and paraffinic fuels, LPG
• Zero-emission heavy-duty vehicle


  A sub-category of clean heavy-duty vehicles
• Targets for clean light-duty vehicles


  • Minimum percentage of clean vehicles in the aggregate public procurement across a Member State, ranging from 17.6% to 38.5% for the period 2021-2025 and 2026-2030
• Targets for clean heavy-duty vehicles


  • Minimum percentage of clean trucks (10-15%) and clean buses (45-65%, with at least half to be zero-emission buses) in the aggregate public procurement across a Member State for the periods 2021-2025 and 2026-2030
• Member States have full flexibility in how they distribute the effort across different contracting authorities and contracting entities to meet the national targets
• Monitoring and reporting will happen primarily through the Tender Electronic Database (TED) to reduce administrative burdens
• Vehicles excluded from the Directive


  • Coaches, agricultural and forestry vehicles, two- and three-wheeled vehicles and quadricycles, track-laying vehicles, mobile machinery
• Vehicles included but Member States may exempt


  • Special vehicles for use by armed services, civil protection, fire services and police forces, special vehicles for use on construction sites, quarries, ports, airports, armoured vehicles, ambulances, hearses, wheelchair accessible cars, mobile cranes
• The Directive foresees a review in 2027 to set new targets for the time period post 2030 and consider possible further expansion of the scope
• Relevant legislation includes the Revised Clean Vehicles Directive (2019/1161), Directive on the promotion of clean & energy-efficient road transport vehicles (2009/33/EC), and related reports and impact assessments