06/09/2016 (Agence Europe) – Contacted by EUROPE on Tuesday 6 September, the chair of the European Parliament’s investigative committee on the Volkswagen scandal (the EMIS committee), Kathleen Van Brempt (S&D, Belgium), rejected any idea of wanting to protect MEPs from her political group. A controversy has blown up after the 1 September meeting of EMIS coordinators, when Jens Gieseke (EPP, Germany) suggested inviting two German MEPs, Bernd Lange and Matthias Groote, to testify before the committee, according to reports in the EUobserver on 2 September. Gieseke justified his idea by the fact that the first MEP was rapporteur on air pollution at the end of the 1990s, whereas the second was rapporteur on Euro 6. Van Brempt is said to have disagreed with the idea because the role of a rapporteur is to pilot talks among groups and seek synthesis, and therefore all the shadow rapporteurs would also need to be invited. A parliamentary source sees Gesieke’s idea as a political manoeuvre by the German right, which wants to take advantage of the subject to attack Germany’s social democrat party (SPD) ahead of the upcoming elections for a German chancellor. Van Brempt told EUROPE that a decision would be taken on the issue at a meeting of coordinators at the end of the month. (PH)