There are anumber of differences between American (LEV) and European (EU3) standards that make them hard to compare. The first is the drive cycle used, US standards use FTP75 cycle consisting of 3 phases (cold transient, cold stabilised and hot transient) whereas EU standards uses a two stage cycle (urban and extra urban). The EU cycle is shorter and so the emissions from the first 100s or so before the catalyst is hot has a greater effect on the overall result. Also the FTP75 results are weighted for each part of the cycle so the final result isn't just a accumulation of the 3 phases divided by the distance travelled. Also important are on board diagnostic requirements which are different (and more stringent) in the US, which means that things like catalyst packages tend to be a bit better. The final point is the actual limits. EU3 are fixed for all passenger vehicles (although there are differences between diesel and gasoline) whereas for LEV there are a number of different derivatives (TLEV, LEV, ULEV and ZEV) with incrementally decreasing limits. To cut a long and complicated story a bit shorter, in my experience a vehicle that will pass EU3 would pass the TLEV standard without trying to hard whilst a vehicle that passes EU4 would pass LEV comfortably and vice versa. That's a bit of a broad brush statement but it's more or less correct.