(Vienna) The Court of Justice of the EU on Wednesday ruled illegal software fitted to diesel vehicles of the Volkswagen brand, which deactivates the filtering of polluting emissions at certain temperatures, paving the way for compensation for injured customers.
Posted at 6:57 a.m.
“A device that guarantees compliance with the nitrogen oxide emission limit values” only when the outside temperature is between 15 and 33 degrees Celsius “constitutes a prohibited defeat device”, writes the highest European court.
Below or above, the exhaust gas recycling system is reduced or even stopped.
The CJEU, which sits in Luxembourg, had been seized by the Austrian Supreme Court and two regional courts following the complaint of buyers, claiming the cancellation of their sales contracts concluded between 2011 and 2013.
“As such a defect of the vehicle is not minor”, the termination “is not, in principle, not excluded”, considers the CJEU.
The German manufacturer explains that it installed this software to protect the engine, an argument which “does not make it legal”, underlines the Court again.
The group would have to be able to justify “immediate risks of damage or accident […]of such gravity that they generate a concrete danger when driving the car.
And even then, the software could not “operate for most of the year”.
In a reaction sent to AFP, Volkswagen said it met such criteria, saying that the emissions control system worked up to a temperature of 10 degrees.
“The impact of the judgment is therefore minimal […] and civil actions for damages claims are doomed to fail,” the group concludes.
This case is distinct from the “Dieselgate” which broke out in September 2015, but poses a similar problem.
Volkswagen had admitted to having rigged 11 million cars so that they displayed levels of nitrogen oxide emissions lower than reality.
“With today’s decision, Volkswagen is once again caught up in the exhaust gas scandal. Several million vehicle owners could now turn against the Wolfsburg group,” German lawyer Claus Goldenstein, who represents more than 45,000 customers in Dieselgate, reacted in a statement.