The impact of intake CO2 addition and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) on engine combustion characteristics, NOx emissions, and soot oxidative reactivity was studied in a common rail diesel engine equipped with a cooled EGR system. The engine test results and the heat release analysis show that the reduced flame temperature, induced by the reduction of the oxygen concentration (dilution effect) is the dominant mechanism via which CO2 and EGR lower NOx emissions in diesel engines. On the other hand, the collected soot from the engine tests was examined for its oxidative reactivity using a thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA). Results show that EGR has a significant effect on soot reactivity and results in higher initial active sites compared to the CO2 case. We conclude that the reduced flame temperature (thermal effect) which is a consequence of the dilution effect is responsible for the observed increase in soot reactivity. These results confirm observations from our past work on flame soot, which showed that the peak adiabatic flame temperature is the governing factor affecting soot reactivity. These findings imply that driving the combustion concepts toward low temperature is favorable to effectively control engine pollutants, including soot reactivity.