Fredrick Federley roars to the European Commission. Photo: Yvonne Åsell / SvD and Markus Schreiber / AP
EU Parliament specially appointed committee emissions scandal to investigate what the EU Commission really knew and prevent a similar scandal could happen again. Now the committee has waited almost three months to get, for example, minutes of meetings needed to investigate what happened.
– It is totally unacceptable. I can not interpret it as anything other than a delay tactic, says Fredrick Federley, group leader of the ALDE emission Committee.
For nearly three months ago demanding emission Committee to take part of the documentation from the European Commission. Fredrick Federley believes that work should be frozen to the documents have been released since the Special Committee is limited to one year. This requirement has resulted in a promise that the documents should be provided to the group shortly.
– Commission or individual Commissioners are doing everything they can to keep this away. EU Member States have agreed that all would be made available to us. Yet did the European Commission ask each member country individually.
Emissions scandal at Volkswagen is embarrassing for the EU because automotive emissions control is regulated at EU level. The scandal was discovered not by the EU, but by the authorities in the United States. Total cheated Volkswagen with 11 million cars and most are available on the EU market. To prevent a recurrence, the special committee to hear CEOs from the auto industry and former EU Commissioners to find out what they knew.
SvD said earlier that the emission Committee, among other things want to hear Foreign Minister Margot Wallström when she was Commissioner for the environment between 1999 and 2004. Others to be heard is the Volkswagen’s current CEO Matthias Müller and then CEO Martin Winterkorn. While Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghon called to the hearing.
However, the emission Committee no court and no one can be forced to answer questions. On Thursday held a hearing with Mr Dimas was Environment Commissioner 2004-2010 and in August is more hearings scheduled. But this is about hearings should not be implemented without the backing of, for example, who made different decisions, says Fredrick Federley.
-’s stalling naturally affects the quality of our questions. That delay the implementation throughout the work. Now we ask questions based on media reports and which we obviously can not always get the original source.
What do you know so far?
– We know that there has been an ongoing debate since 2001 on how real emission values. Then the question is how much they knew about what was going on.
Are there signs that the Commission was aware of the cheating?
– Yes, we suspect that several people at multiple levels has known about this, but exactly what is too early to say. There is also reason to believe that the Member States have known for some form of cheating.
How is the trust when the Commission is not cooperating?
– The Commission has started to become more transparent, as this risks becoming a big step back. I also believe that the EU caught up in a time when the Union is questioned.
The documents which the Committee wants to access include documentation from EU technical bilkommitté TCMV. It is the technical committee decided on new rules nitrogen in the fall. The Committee took a decision criticized by environmentalists who argue that it is a political issue that should be decided by transparency. The committee’s work is technically and meetings are often closed. When nitrogen rules stated could SvD tell you that the then Environment Minister Åsa Romson ran a softer line than what was communicated externally.
Release scandal does not stop either at Volkswagen, but several car companies have been suspended. Mitsubishi’s management has acknowledged that in 25 years cheated with measurements of the cars’ fuel consumption. Even among others, Renault and Opel emission questioned.
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