European commission wants ability to fine €30,000 for each rule-breaking car, as the EU tries to crack down after the VW emissions scandal

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

EU authorities want the power to impose big fines on carmakers who cheat anti-pollution rules, in the latest attempt to get to grips with the VW emissions scandal.

The European commission wants to fine carmakers up to €30,000 (£22,600) for each rule-breaking car they produce, according to a draft law that will be published on Wednesday.



The EU’s industry chief, Elżbieta Bieńkowska, said the proposals, along with parallel plans to overhaul car emissions tests, marked a turning point in how the EU regulated the car industry.

“It is a huge difference from what we have now,” she said. “Life for them will never be the same again.”



Although the proposals still have to be go through the EU’s labyrinthine lawmaking process, they reveal how some policymakers are seeking to get tough on the car industry in the wake of the VW scandal.

VW rejects call to compensate European drivers over emissions scandal Read more

VW was plunged into turmoil, after it admitted that 11m cars worldwide had been designed to cheat emissions tests. The defeat devices meant that close to 1m tonnes of extra air pollution was spewed into the atmosphere every year, roughly the same as the UK’s combined emissions for all power stations, vehicles, industry and agriculture.



But the crisis also caused angst among European regulators. Although most of the cars fitted with defeat devices were sold in Europe, it took a US authority to detect the scandal.

Bieńkowska admitted the EU was “completely helpless” when the scandal blew up last autumn. The commissioner, who is battling VW for compensation for European consumers, said she would also like to see an overhaul of European consumer protection laws to bring them closer in line with US standards.

She vowed to continue to press the carmaker for compensation at a further meeting with its executives in February, although she has no power to make VW pay.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Elżbieta Bieńkowska, EU’s industry chief. Photograph: Wiktor Dabkowski/dpa/Corbis

In the US, which has tougher consumer-protection laws, VW has agreed to pay $1,000 (£704) to 500,000 drivers, but is refusing to pay compensation to 8.5 million European drivers.

One idea the car industry may find harder to resist is a proposal in the draft regulation to break the close ties between carmakers and laboratories that test vehicles. In most EU countries, although not the UK, carmakers are able to shop around the emissions-testing labs.

“The car manufacturer can go to any [testing service] to check which one is better for their purposes,” said Bieńkowska. “We think there is a conflict of interest.”

The VW scandal also exposed the open secret that cars tested in a lab tend to be given lower-emissions values, because the engine is worked less hard than in real life, as technicians tweak weight and air-resistance.

On Monday night Volkswagen’s chief executive, Matthias Müller, said the gap between laboratory tests and real-world standards was no longer acceptable.



“The industrywide discrepancies between official test results and actual usage is no longer tolerable,” he said ahead of a meeting with EU officials in Brussels. “We, the industry, need to take a new path.”



But Rebecca Harms, a German member of the European parliament, voiced caution about seeing the VW scandal as a turning point.



“The speech by Mr Müller said everything that had to be said ... but whether we can believe it or not is still open.”

The Green MEP, who has been involved in politics for a quarter of a century in Lower Saxony, the German state that has a 20% stake in VW, said the company was “a kind of empire in Germany”, with strong support from politicians and trade unions.

She said VW had done world-class research and development into low-emissions technology, including electric cars, but had chosen to focus on diesel engines.



“They have the knowledge and capacities to contribute to a major change [in green-car technologies], but whether they believe they can sell it or not is another issue. So far they decided to protect dirty technologies.”

Lawmakers in the European parliament fear the latest effort to regulate the car industry could be weakened by countries with powerful manufacturers, such as the UK, Germany and France.



The EU’s biggest member states already stand accused of watering down new emissions tests, ahead of a crucial vote by MEPs next week.