EC Vice-President and Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said that although carmakers had the technology to reduce harmful emissions below legal limits, they avoided competition and denied consumers the opportunity to buy a car that was less polluting.
“So today’s decision is about how legitimate technical cooperation has gone wrong. And we do not tolerate when companies negotiate secretly, “said Vestagerová.
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Volkswagen is considering an appeal
Volkswagen is considering taking legal action against the fine now. He argues that sanctions for technical negotiations on emission technologies with other car manufacturers set a debatable precedent.
“The Commission is entering a new area of justice because, for the first time, it considers technical cooperation to be an antitrust infringement,” said the Volkswagen Group, which is fined € 502 million. “In addition (the commission) imposes fines, although the content of the negotiations never took place and no customers suffered as a result,” Volkswagen added. Audi and Porsche are part of it.
The case was not directly related to the 2015 dieselgate scandal. At the time, Volkswagen admitted in response to allegations by the US authorities that it had installed software to manipulate emission tests in about 11 million diesel cars worldwide.
The dieselgate scandal of the carmaker has so far cost about 32 billion euros (826 billion crowns). The money was used, for example, to convene and modify cars, to compensate customers and for various fines.
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