VW scandal: European Commission since 2012 on illegal software manipulation … – Wirtschaftswoche

The former EU Commissioner Antonio Tajani was informed in July 2012 from a manager of an auto supplier fact that carmakers in the EU with software programs that emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon dioxide (CO2) manipulate illegally with admission tests. In a personal meeting the manager with Tajani on July 4, 2012 in a Strasbourg office of the EU Commission, this informed the manager the then European Commissioner with.

The software used recognize automatically when a car located in the admission test and then manipulating the emission values, declared the manager. If the Commission did not proceed against these sophisticated scams, so he warned Tajani, “discredits the EU overall efforts to make road traffic less health and environmental hazard.” At the one-hour meeting was attended by a total of six people attended, including four representatives of the European Commission.

In a letter to Tajani, the preparation of the meeting was the present and WirtschaftsWoche, the manager describing exactly the scam, as they used came at VW for manipulating NOx values: “Modern technology offers many ways to manipulate admission tests. Approximately by using special software routines that detect the start of a Homologationszyklus “. Only then will the cars functioned correctly. Later on the road, however, was working the technique deliberately only limited. The Commission had the industry urgently give a clear signal that such trickery would not be tolerated.

The unholy alliance of VW and the German government.

Tajani wrote in response at the meeting a letter to the Minister of Transport of the EU Member States. He had become clear that market surveillance in the field of auto industry needs to be improved, Tajani wrote in the letter, the present WirtschaftsWoche. The Commissioner left it in this general representation. The possible fraud in approval procedures he did not mention. Tajani asked the Minister to take action on market surveillance and to keep him informed of their plans up to date.

EU industry commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska had reported to Parliament in October 2015 that the Commission had experienced only in 2014 of exhaust manipulations. A Commission spokeswoman told the Wirtschaftswoche, the Commission is the danger of software manipulations have been known for some time, but it had no evidence of specific cases before flying up the VW scandal. The Wirtschaftswoche had reported two weeks ago on the subject.