Following the revelations in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on experiments carried out on monkeys and humans to measure the effect of emissions on health, the European Commission spokesperson on the internal market and industry said on Monday 29 January that experiments on vehicle emissions should not involve testing on animals or human beings and called for further information.
“Within the EU type approval (of motor vehicles) framework, tests are focused on limiting emissions from vehicles. These are carried out by accredited laboratories and technical services and never involve human or animal testing”, stated Lucia Caudet. “The EU has always been and will remain committed to animal welfare, to improving public health and to protecting the environment”, she went on to say. “Tomorrow we have an Air Quality Ministerial Summit happening here in Brussels, and we hope that the Minister of the respective country will be able to explain what has happened”, she added.
Regulation 715/2007/EC makes provision for tests on limiting emissions from diesel vehicles but not, in any way, for experiments on the effect on health of exhaust fumes, such as nitrogen oxide, another source said, pointing out that, under the current rules, the Commission does not supervise tests.
The European Commission is likely to be handed fresh powers following revision of the regulation on the approval and market surveillance of motor vehicles, on which inter-institutional agreement was reached in December (see EUROPE 11921).
Van Brempt says she cannot count on “ethical behaviour” from Volkswagen. The former chair of the EMIS committee into the so-called Dieselgate, Kathleen van Brempt (S&D, Belgium) passed a sharp judgment on the German carmaker. “We cannot count on Volkswagen’s ethical behaviour, now that it is clear that the group not only tested the impact of emissions on monkeys in the lab, but on humans as well”, she stated. She is annoyed, too, at the slowness of the recalls by Volkswagen of vehicles involved in the company’s cheating of the system. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)