EU charges German car companies with collusion over emissions technology
Volkswagen, BMW, and Daimler could face large fines after the European Commission said the car manufacturers had colluded to block the introduction of clean emissions technology.
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The Commission said today that it believed the car companies breached European Union competition rules using the framework of the car manufacturers' so-called circle of five technical meetings.
The circle of five was comprised of BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen Group's VW, Audi and Porsche, and is alleged to have aided collusion between 2006 and 2014.
The Commission said the car companies sought to limit the development and roll-out of emission cleaning technology for new diesel and petrol passenger cars sold in the European Economic Area (EEA).
Margrethe Vestager, commissioner in charge of competition policy, said: "Companies can cooperate in many ways to improve the quality of their products. However, EU competition rules do not allow them to collude on exactly the opposite: not to improve their products, not to compete on quality.
“We are concerned that this is what happened in this case and that Daimler, VW and BMW may have broken EU competition rules. As a result, European consumers may have been denied the opportunity to buy cars with the best available technology. The three car manufacturers now have the opportunity to respond to our findings."
The news comes four years after the Volkswagen emissions scandal – when the German car maker was found to have used technology to cheat in pollution tests – rocked Germany and the European car industry.
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EU investigators said the new case was limited to an alleged violation of competition law and was not about possible breaches of environmental legislation.