Over the course of three sessions extending beyond 10 hours on Monday 10 and Tuesday 11 October, representatives of national technical services and type approval authorities appeared one after the other before MEPs on the European Parliament’s committee of inquiry (EMIS) into the Volkswagen scandal without being able to sway them. Quite the opposite.
Called to appear were the German authorities, including the Kraftfahrt Bundesamt (KBA), the German federal motor transport authority, and the Luxembourg, UK and Dutch authorities. The aim was to determine their role and responsibility in the scandal. The conclusions reached by a number of MEPs on the committee are unequivocal.
Joint rapporteur Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy (ALDE, the Netherlands) was contacted by EUROPE. He drew two main conclusions from the exchanges. The first is that national authorities have not fulfilled their legal enforcement obligations, having used only the new European driving cycle (NEDC) test when the legislation allowed them to make use of other tests to detect illegal defeat devices. The second relates to the negative effects of competition between national authorities and their lack of independence which led the authorities to go no further than the minimum requirement in order to attract car makers to use their services.
Kathleen Van Brempt (S&D, Belgium) who chairs the EMIS committee, was equally critical. “The last days were an eye opener. National authorities are locked into procedures, thinking that if the procedure is followed all is fine”, she told us. Everyone, she said, is involved in a game of passing the buck. For example, the Dutch authority which approved the Opel Zafira says that the emissions problem is the responsibility of the German authority.
Karima Delli (Greens/EFA, France), rapporteur for the opinion on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the approval and market surveillance of motor vehicles, said that “the independence of authorities from manufacturers is far from proven”. In her view, the only solution is an agency similar to the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency (see EUROPE 11643).
Less forthright but still critical, EPP MEP Françoise Grossetête (France) told EUROPE that “some national authorities seem fretful and [MEPs will] pursue each of the issues”. “As the hearings unfold, we can feel the need for supervision of national authorities at European level to better coordinate work done”, she added.
The exchanges were at times lively and some of the statements raised a few eyebrows, for instance, when Ekhard Zinke, the head of the KBA, said that he had no knowledge of the use of defeat devices prior to the scandal breaking, as EUObserver reported on 11 October. This came as a surprise, particularly since the existence of such devices has been known since 1998 and European legislation contains various articles, such as on Euro 5 and 6 (Regulation 715/2007, Article 5) banning them. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens with Thomas Régnier)