Brussels, 16/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 16 October, Philippe Juvin (EPP, France) called upon the president of the committee on the internal market (IMCO) of the European Parliament and the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, to invite Matthias Müller, the new chairman of the Volkswagen group, and its former chairman, Martin Winterkorn, to appear before the Parliament to provide explanations.
“So far, the European Parliament has gone no further than to convene the European Commission, which was abused by Volkswagen. But those who bear the greatest responsibility have not been heard. It's a bit like the European Parliament hearing the police and not the thieves”, Philippe Juvin explained, referring to the American example, which recently saw the CEO of Volkswagen America, Michael Horn, invited to appear before Congress. No date has yet been set, as this is the very first stage, a colleague of the MEP told EUROPE, adding that this was an individual initiative.
Meeting with the type approval authorities. The day before, the European Commission was visited by the various type approval authorities to discuss the state of play with the investigations, focusing mainly on the report of the German federal motor vehicles office (Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt - KBA), which has ordered an obligatory recall (see EUROPE 11411) of all fraudulent vehicles and for these to be brought into line by the end of 2016, in accordance with the report submitted by the German carmaker on 7 October (see EUROPE 11405).
Although the KBA has ordered the manufacturer to recall all vehicles at European level, the office only has competence on German soil. In this framework, the authorities have agreed that each of them will be responsible on their own national territory for ensuring that the commitments made by the German car builder are set in place. Furthermore, all of the national authorities are invited to verify whether the national fleet of Volkswagen vehicles with diesel engines are fitted with the cheat device and, if so, to remove it.
The European Commission is to facilitate the exchange of information on the national investigations and, via the Joint Research Centre, to supply a joint research methodology in order to obtain comparable and reliable results, according to a European source. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)