The EC Directive only applies to the first two-year manufacturer warranty and in the UK the SMMT has stretched it to include an additional year’s ‘dealer warranty’. It does not apply to any further conditional warranty. MB built a lot of cars that rust from 1996 to 2006 and every unwisely gave them all that 30-year Mobilo warranty. Obviously the company has to get out of meeting claims on it any way it can, otherwise it's faced with rebuilding large numbers of the cars it built between 1996 and 2004.