OCR2888 June 2008

Slovakia applies to join the Euro

Slovakia today made a formal application to join the single European currency and bid to become the fourth of Europe’s new member states to progress to the next stage of economic integration by locking themselves into the Euro. A verdict on entry is likely to come as early as May 7th when the EU commission publishes new economic forecasts which will include data on the key convergence criteria for wannabee euro zone members. If all goes well, Slovakia will enter the single currency system on 1st January 2009.

Meeting the CO2 challenge

The Financial Times reports today that the UK government has ordered a review aimed at helping the UK motor industry tackle the twin challenges of low-cost competition and emerging low-carbon car technologies. This is directly relevant to students preparing for the OCR2888 A2 pre-release case study for June 2008 which focuses on the European automotive industry.

“Carmakers face slowing UK sales and pressure from government and the European Union to cut their vehicles’ carbon dioxide emissions. The industry’s push to develop lower-emission cars could change motor vehicle technology more significantly over the next five years than in the past 100, a research report last month by Deutsche Bank found.”

The rest of the article can be found here

OCR 2888: New SMMT report on CO2 emissions

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders have released a new report on progress in cutting CO2 emissions from the motor vehicle industry. This looks like good background material for teachers and students preparing for the OCR 2888 paper, it focuses on how there has been a big shift in the new car market towards vehicles that come in under the 140g/km emissions level.

They claim that:

Average new car CO2 has fallen 13.1% since 1997, to 164.9 g/km
Total CO2 emissions from all cars in use has fallen by 4.8% since 1997
Almost a quarter of all new cars registered in 2007 were under 140g/km and over 10% were under 130g/km
There are record numbers of model ranges available to consumers, providing choice to meet a broad spectrum of consumer demands

Here is the link to download the report as a pdf file

OCR 2888 - June Case Study - Broad Themes

This is the first in a series of blog posts relating to the OCR A2 Economics Case Study, Economics in a European Context. This summer the pre-release case study materials focus on the EU automotive industry and many of the economic and environmental issues that link to this important industrial sector. I have been working on our toolkit for this paper (due out in a few days) and below I have tried to capture some of the broad themes that I feel are covered by the case study materials. Please do add your own ideas through the blog!