Rome- Recognizing the car industry is vital for prosperity in Europe during a CARS 21 report (12 million jobs and a € 92 bn trade balance), a European Commission Action Plan aims to help the sector, officials say.

  Planned actions include:

--  providing EU financing for research, in particular to help the sector adapt to the technologies of tomorrow, and reinforcing EIB lending to industry;

 -- managing the sector's costs by applying the principles of smart regulation;

-- and supporting the internationalization of EU industry by improving market access through trade negotiations and work on regulatory and procedural convergence with the ultimate aim of achieving a worldwide car type approval. This would mean that any car produced in the world can be marketed in every country of the world.

Moreover, the Cars 21 report sets out a complete vision for the automotive industry in 2020 providing recommendations for rapid progress on important subjects such as electro-mobility, road safety, market access strategy and a review of the CO2 emissions from cars and vans.

The European Commission has announced its intention to adopt a Communication on the outcome of the CARS 21 process. The Communication will also announce how the Commission proposes to implement the policy recommendations of the group in its policies. In addition, CARS 2020 Group will be set up, meeting annually in order to monitor the progress achieved in the implementation.

While the EU market is behind the Chinese market in terms of volume, the situation is radically different in terms of value of sales which is still considerably lower on all the markets of emerging economies, industry sources say. Also the European manufacturers seem well positioned to benefit from the opportunities on the emerging markets.