The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled this Wednesday an illegal software installed in diesel vehicles of the Volkswagen brand, which deactivates the filtering of polluting emissions at certain temperatures, paving the way to compensate injured customers.
“A device that guarantees compliance with the emission limit values for nitrogen oxides” only when the outside temperature is between 15 and 33 degrees Celsius “constitutes a prohibited deactivation device,” writes the highest European court.
Below or above, the exhaust gas recycling system is reduced or even stopped.
The CJEU, based in Luxembourg, had been intervened by the Supreme Court of Austria and two regional courts after the complaint of the buyers, who demanded the rescission of their sales contracts concluded between 2011 and 2013.
“Not being such a defect of the vehicle minor”, the termination “is not, in principle, excluded”, considers the CJEU.
The German manufacturer explains that it installed this software to protect the engine, an argument that “does not make it legal”, the Court also underlines.
The group would have to be able to justify “immediate risks of damage or accident (…), of such seriousness that they generate a specific danger when driving” the car. And even then, the software couldn’t “work for most of the year.”
The “failed claims for damages”
In a reaction sent to AFP, Volkswagen said it met those criteria and said the emissions control system worked down to a temperature of 10 degrees.
“The impact of the sentence is, therefore, minimal (…) and civil actions for damages are doomed to failure,” the group concludes.
This case is different from the “Dieselgate” that broke out in September 2015, but it raises a similar issue. Volkswagen had admitted to rigging 11 million cars to show lower than reality levels of nitrogen oxide emissions.
“With today’s decision, Volkswagen is again involved in the exhaust gas scandal. Several million vehicle owners could now turn against the Wolfsburg group,” German lawyer Claus Goldenstein, who represents, reacted in a press release. to over 45,000 customers at Dieselgate. .
Source: BFM TV
