Brussels, 27/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - Proposals to set up a temporary Parliamentary commission of inquiry into the Volkswagen scandal were abandoned in the final version of the resolution on “emission measurements in the automotive sector” that was adopted by the European Parliament in plenary session on Tuesday 27 October, much to the displeasure of the Greens who voted against the resolution despite having prompted it in the first place.
The amendment in question, which had the support of the Greens, the GUE/NGL and the Liberals, was roundly defeated by 453 votes to 209. “We've just witnessed one of the most absurd voters ever in this Parliament. … Without a Parliamentary commission of inquiry, improvement in standards on emissions of pollutants and test conditions, which have to be carried out under real-life conditions and not in a lab, will not happen even though it is, above all, the health of our citizens that is at stake”, lamented Karima Delli (Greens/EFA, France). At the time of the LuxLeaks, a call from the Greens for a commission of inquiry was also dismissed and a special commission with a less wide-ranging mandate set up instead (see EUROPE 11245).
Over the piece, a large number of amendments backed by the Greens were rejected, whether on false green claims, the collective redress mechanism in the event of deception or mention of a wait-and-see attitude by European authorities to this issue. The EPP amendment restating support for diesel as a lever in tackling climate change was passed relatively easily (311 votes to 264, with 190 abstentions), “thanks to the abstention of the Socialists”, according to a source close to the matter.
The call for a European inquiry into car makers' practices to be led by the European Commission was upheld. Some weeks ago, the Greens launched a petition which gathered over 140,000 signatures, calling on the Commission to take over national investigations. The Commission refused, stating that it did not have the powers to enable it to do so.
The resolution (see EUROPE 11408) followed on from an oral question put at the last plenary session when Industry Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska appeared before MEPs (see EUROPE 11404). In the course of that exchange, some MEPs were highly critical of the Commission, pointing to a Joint Research Centre (JRC) report dating from 2007 indicating the possible existence of the defeat device.
Case of former Industry Commissioner Antonio Tajani. This new chapter in the Volkswagen scandal comes at the end of a well-filled week. On Sunday 25 October, the Financial Times suggested that the Commission had been warned as early as 2013 but had taken no action. The industry commissioner at the time, Antonio Tajani denied this on his Twitter account, publishing a series of cryptic letters that showed he was aware of the situation and was trying to rectify the situation, for example, by putting in place new emissions testing under real driving conditions. In one of the vagaries of history, Tajani and the then environment commissioner Janez Potocnik wrote to the former Danish minister on 12 March 2013, indicating that, given the specific nature of the US market, where diesel-fuelled light vehicles are virtually non-existent, it could not be compared with the EU's.
The Technical Committee - Motor Vehicles (TCMV) will meet on Wednesday 28 October to discuss arrangements for real driving conditions testing. The positions of the member states shown so far would seem to be less ambitious than that of the Commission (see EUROPE 11417). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)