Brussels, 15/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 15 October, the services of the European Commission met representatives from the 28 national certification authorities to discuss the level of progress made in the national level investigations following the Volkswagen scandal involving tampered software.
Lucia Caudet, the spokesperson for industrial policy at the European Commission (see EUROPE 11396), explained that: “The Commission has invited all member states to carry out the necessary investigations at national level and report back. We need to have a full picture about the nature of the defeat device used, and learn how many vehicles certified in the EU were fitted with such devices”.
The European Commission pointed out that the Commission sets the regulatory framework, emissions limits and defines testing procedures but that it was up to the member states to ensure that they “have all enforcement tools at their disposal and have a standing obligation to prevent and ban the use of defeat devices” (e.g. the tampered software). The Commission also insisted on the subsidiarity principle and indicated that member states are also better placed to carry out the necessary investigations.
The spokesperson pointed out that “attention will mainly focus on the German authorities and Volkswagen”. Last week, the German group made a commitment to recall all the cars equipped with tampered software in January (see EUROPE 11405) and rectify everything by the end of 2016, under the surveillance of the German Federal Office for Motor Vehicles (Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt - KBA). This office also called for all vehicles to be recalled, as opposed to the manufacturer, which only wanted to recall the vehicles for consumers who wanted to, according to a report in the German newspaper Bild-Zeitung. This could involve between 9.5 and 11 million vehicles in the world, including 500,000 vehicles in the US and 8 million in Europe (2.4 million in Germany and more than 940,000 in France). According to the most recent revelations in Spiegel-Online, at least 30 managers have been implicated, a much higher number than originally announced by the new president of the group, Matthias Müller. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)