Meeting of the Committee of Inquiry into Emission Measurements in the Automotive Sector (EMIS), in the EP in Brussels. Hearing of Alexander DOBRINDT, Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Germany and statements by Ismail ERTUG (S&amp;D, DE), Hans-Olaf HENKEL (ECR, DE), Bas EICKHOUT (Greens/EFA, NL), and Gesine MEISSNER (ALDE, DE).

Brussels

meeting

EICKHOUT, Bas (Greens/EFA, NL)

emissions of vehicles (T)

HENKEL, Hans-Olaf (ECR, DE)

hearing

Committee of Inquiry into Emission Measurements in the Automotive Sector

MEISSNER, Gesine (ALDE, DE)

ERTUG, Ismail (S&D, DE)

DOBRINDT, Alexander (DE)

Hearing of Alexander DOBRINDT, Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Germany: extracts from the meeting of the Committee of Inquiry into Emission Measurements in the Automotive Sector (EMIS)

SOUNDBITE (German), Alexander DOBRINDT, Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Germany, Immediately after the announcement of the accusations of the US authorities of against Wolkswagen we immediately took action and to date we are the country in Europe that has fully taken measures to get to the bottom of this.

SOUNDBITE (German), Alexander DOBRINDT, Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Germany, Amongst the immediate measures that the motor transport authority has agreed is that when granting the type approval a statement must be given as to whether or not multi protection devices are used, if that is the case the manufacturer must then explain these specific operations of the software to the motor transport authority and explain the reasons why this protection device is there, how it works and accordingly it will be assessed.

SOUNDBITE (German), Ismail ERTUG (S&amp;D, DE), This week a number of German media have quoted you as being against class actions by consumers, later you said that you had nothing against consumer protection but you didn't like the idea of these collective actions. What is the problem in your view?

SOUNDBITE (German), Alexander DOBRINDT, Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Germany, The point that you are refering to is simply a general form of words for a type of action where I said it was the wrong place on the grounds that there was no legal act on the basis of which such a form of words could be used.

SOUNDBITE (German), Hans-Olaf HENKEL (ECR, DE), We've heard reports from the <a href="http://www.sueddeutsche.de/">S&uuml;ddeutsche Zeitung</a> that apparently there is insistence that FIAT and Chrysler have illegal defeat devices that they have included.. this is a point that's been disputed when we met with him, so you have any evidence for those views?

SOUNDBITE (German), Alexander DOBRINDT, Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Germany, The motor transport authority in Germany has conducted investigations on a number of vehicles of the FIAT company and the findings were that after a certain ammount of time you get considerable reduction in the cleaning, after 22 minutes exactly, and the view of our committee of enquiry was clear: this is an unlawful defeat device, and we made that view known to the Commission.

SOUNDBITE (English), Bas EICKHOUT (Greens/EFA, NL), So for FIAT you know very clear for this time constraint, now we move to OPEL. They lowered their reduction below 17 degrees and then suddenly you talk about "this is a very generous interpretation of the engine protection idea". So why is this suddenly a very generous protection idea whereas for FIAT it is an illegal defeat device?

SOUNDBITE (German), Alexander DOBRINDT,  Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Germany, From the investigations there is room for doubt that you can prove that with those exceptions and these are therefore authorisations in the future that we can say will no longer be possible with that thermo window.

SOUNDBITE (German), Gesine MEISSNER (ALDE, DE), We need to know who knowingly signed up to the regulation which as has now been discovered contains loopholes?

SOUNDBITE (German), Alexander DOBRINDT,  Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Germany, What I said was very clear, I said Article 5 actually predates 2007 and was simply copied and pasted in, what I said was that there have been technological developments since and that the regulation failed to take that into account. If what you're asking is: Did anybody know before 2015 about illegal defeat devices? then the answer is no.