Luxembourg, 01/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - Internal Market and Industry Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska announced after the Competitiveness Council in Luxembourg on Thursday 1 October that the European Commission will submit a report to the member states by 30 November on the scale of the scandal surrounding German car company Volkswagen ahead of the next Competitiveness Council.
The Commissioner said at a press conference that first of all an assessment of the situation was needed before taking tangible measures to deal with the scandal. To date, France, Germany and Italy have begun investigations at national level and the Commissioner said the Commission was prepared to head the process and coordinate action.
She said the final technical details of the RDF control system (Real Drive Emissions) need to be finalised so that they can be applied as soon as possible. The system is supposed to come into force and become compulsory in the autumn of 2017. She said progress needed to be made on the equivalence system.
German secretary of state Matthias Machnig said that Volkswagen has promised to publish a report by 7 October for the German government and has promised to provide detailed information about the number of vehicles concerned and the measures it is planning to take, along with a detailed timeline. The German government says it wants to shed full light on fraudulent practices in the company in order to restore consumer confidence, pointing out that the German car industry directly or indirectly concerns a seventh of all workers in Germany.
The German secretary of state said he was in favour of diesel because it is much more efficient than petrol when it comes to CO2 emissions and therefore better at combating climate change. The only problem with diesel, he said, was the nitrogen oxide emissions, which are more damaging to health. In Spain, nearly 70% of all new vehicles sold have a diesel engine, he added, as an illustration of the size of the market.
Spanish minister José Manuel Soria Lopez explained in Luxembourg that his government had banned the sale of 6,000 cars equipped with the invalidation software manufactured in Spain but not yet put on the market. At a meeting in Madrid the day before, Volkswagen pledged to recall all models equipped with the software, he said, adding that car purchasers would not be compensated for the difference in CO2 emissions measured in laboratories and those in real conditions because the scandal is only about nitrogen dioxide emissions.
At the European institutions, the next step will be on 6 October, when the motor engine technical committee of experts from the Commission and member states will meet to discuss the national investigations (see EUROPE 11397). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)