REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL Quality of petrol and diesel fuel used for road transport in the European Union (Reporting year 2016)
Date: 2018-02-06
Institutions: Directorate-General for Climate Action, European Commission
Subjects: EU Member State, air quality, diesel fuel, environmental standard, marketing standard, petrol, quality standard, road transport, sampling

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  EN 

   EUROPEAN COMMISSION  Brussels, 6.2.2018  COM(2018) 56 final  REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL Quality of petrol and diesel fuel used for road transport in the European Union  (Reporting year 2016)  
 
 
REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND 
THE COUNCIL 

Quality of petrol and diesel fuel used for road transport in the European Union 
(Reporting years 2016) 

INTRODUCTION 

1. 
Pursuant  to  Article  8(3)  of  Directive  98/70/EC1  relating  to  the  quality  of  petrol  and  diesel 
fuels (henceforth the "Fuel Quality Directive"), Member States are required to report annually 
information on the total volumes and the quality of petrol and diesel fuels sold for use in road 
transport.  

This  report  is  based  on  the  data  submitted  by  Member  States  to  the  European  Environment 
Agency  (EEA)  for  the  year  2016.  The  compilation  and  analysis  of  the  data  reported  by 
Member States is presented in the EEA Technical report No 24/2017 on ‘Fuel quality in the 
EU in 2016’. 

Member  States  assess  the  quality  of  fuels  through  a  Fuel  Quality  Monitoring  System 
(FQMS)2.  Member  States  must  sample  fuels  each  year  and  analyse  their  technical 
characteristics  to  ensure  that  they  are  consistent  with  the  requirements  of  the  Fuel  Quality 
Directive. The limiting values set out by the Fuel Quality Directive concern parameters such 
as: 

• 

• 

for  petrol  fuels:  distillation  value,  hydrocarbon  analysis,  lead  content,  manganese 
content,  motor  octane  number  (MON),  oxygen  content,  oxygenates,  research  octane 
number (RON), sulphur content and the vapour pressure for the summer period; 

for diesel fuels: cetane number, density at 15 °C, distillation, fatty acid methyl esters 
(FAME)  content,  manganese  content,  polycyclic  aromatic  hydrocarbons  and  sulphur 
content. 

2. 

OVERVIEW OF THE 2016 FUEL QUALITY DATA IN THE EU 

All EU Member States, plus Norway and Iceland, submitted fuel quality reports for 2016. 

Fuels sales, types and biocomponent content 

EU fuel sales continue to be dominated by diesel: 71.8 % (257 206 million litres) of fuel sold 
was diesel and 28.2 % was petrol (100 838 million litres). Total fuels sales increased by 2.7 % 
as compared to 2015. Petrol sales in 2016 remained almost unchanged, whereas diesel sales 
increased by 3.8 %. 

The share of diesel fuel sales has increased over the years, from a share of total sales in 2001 
of  55.6  %  to  a  share  of  71.8  %  in  2016.  This  reflects  to  a  large  degree  the  increasing 
dieselisation  of  Europe’s  vehicle  fleet  during  that  period.  Diesel  fuel  consumption  is 
significant in most of the 28 EU Member States (> 60 % of total fuel sales) with the exception 
of Cyprus, Greece, Malta and the Netherlands. 

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2  

Directive 98/70/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council relating to the quality of petrol and 
diesel fuels and amending Council Directive 93/12/EEC, OJ L 350 of 28.12.1998, p. 58. 
European Standard EN 14274 provides information on how to set up a FQMS depending on the country 
size and statistical model used, as well as guidance on determining the minimum number of samples to 
be taken. 

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The majority of petrol sales in 2016 comprised fuels with a petrol grade RON of 95, which 
accounted for 86.3 % of the total petrol fuel sales; 7.6% of sales were 95 < RON < 98; and 5.8 
% were RON ≥ 98. There was an insignificant proportion of RON = 91 sales. 

Almost  all  diesel  sold  in  the  EU  contains  biodiesel,  whereas  85 %  of  petrol  sold  contains 
bioethanol.  75 %  of  petrol  fuel  sold  in  the  EU  in  2016  had  up  to  a  5  %  ethanol  content  by 
volume and 10% had up to 10% of ethanol content. 83 % of diesel fuel sold contained up to 7 
% of fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) and 17 % contained more. 

Compliance of fuel sold with Fuel Quality Directive limits 

Five  Member  States  reported  full  compliance  for  petrol  (Greece,  Lithuania,  Netherlands, 
Slovenia  and  Sweden)  and  9  for  diesel  (Bulgaria,  Croatia,  Finland,  Germany,  Ireland, 
Lithuania,  Malta,  Slovenia  and  Sweden).  Lithuania,  Slovenia  and  Sweden  reported  full 
compliance  for  both  fuels.  On  the  other  hand,  one  Member  State  (Belgium)  reported  more 
than 100 non-compliances for petrol in 2016. 

Member States reported a total of 507 non-compliances for petrol and 101 for diesel for the 
year  2016.  For  petrol,  the  most  common  parameters  falling  outside  the  specifications  were 
summer vapour pressure (in 14 Member States), RON (in 11 Member States) and MON (in 7 
Member  States).  14  Member  States  reported  exceedances  of  aromatics,  oxygen  content  or 
distillation  parameters.  For  diesel,  the  most  common  parameters  falling  outside  the 
specifications were sulphur content (in 7 Member States) and fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) 
content (in 7 Member States). 

All  Member  States  have  described  the  actions  taken  when  non-compliant  samples  were 
identified.  These  included  informing  the  competent  authorities,  initiating  investigations, 
imposing penalties and fines, or resampling. For a small number of cases no action has been 
taken where the non-compliant parameters were found to be very close to the tolerance limits. 

There was therefore no need for the Commission to launch any new investigation in this area. 

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