BERLIN, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- Carmakers should be fined by authorities in Germany for their domestic emissions-cheating practices in the "dieselgate" scandal, Axel Friedrich of the Environmental Action Germany (DUH) told Xinhua on Wednesday.
"The automotive industry has made massive profits while poisoning people by selling cars which were labelled incorrectly." This behavior, Friedrich argues, "must be punished with financial sanctions. I cannot understand the position of the transport minister to handle the automotive industry with kid gloves."
The comments by the director of the Emissions Control Institute of DUH were made in response to calls by the German Social Democrats (SPD) on Wednesday for emissions-cheating carmakers to be fined after a court ruled that a partial diesel driving ban was needed in Berlin from 2019 onwards to improve air quality in the German capital.
"Whoever cheats should also pay for it. Maybe this way the automotive managers will finally see reason," SPD parliamentary faction vice-president Soeren Bartol told the German press agency.
Bartol argued that transport minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) should fine carmakers 5,000 euros (5,762 U.S. dollars) per manipulated vehicle in the diesel emissions scandal unless automotive executives agree to carry out technical retrofitting measures (so called "hardware upgrades") at their own expense.
Similarly, finance minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) said that the ball was now in the court of carmakers who would either have to finance hardware upgrades fully or offer attractive incentives for fleet renewal. The SPD forms part of Germany's ruling "grand coalition" with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) in Berlin and has repeatedly described such technical retrofitting as being imperative to avoid outright driving bans.
The Berlin Administrative Court ruled on Tuesday that bans on older diesel vehicles were required in at least 11 heavily-congested areas of the capital by 2019 to ensure its compliance with European Union (EU) clean air legislation. Berlin is now set to follow in the footsteps of Hamburg, Stuttgart and Frankfurt where driving bans were already ordered by courts earlier on the basis of a landmark ruling by the Federal Administrative Court which first enabled German cities to take these drastic steps unilaterally to lower urban nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions.
DUH would have preferred an area-wide ban, rather than entry restrictions for diesel vehicles on specific streets in Berlin, according to Friedrich. Nevertheless, he welcomed the partial ban announced on Tuesday as a "signal that people cannot continue to be burdened with high air pollution."
German prosecutors are in the process of investigating dozens of automotive executives and employees for their suspected role in installing illicit defeat devices to understate NOx emissions from diesel cars of the Euro4 and Euro5 motor generations. According to the recent testing conducted independently by the DUH, however, even the newest Euro6 diesel motor types still release 5.5 times more NOx emissions on average than permitted under EU law.
DUH president Juergen Resch told dpa on Wednesday that the spread of driving bans from Hamburg to Berlin had raised the pressure on the "grand coalition" to develop a nation-wide "Blue Placard" marking scheme to identify diesel vehicles to enter the affected cities. The federal government has so far resisted calls for such a universal regulation and has instead proposed fleet renewal incentives and voluntary hardware upgrades by carmakers as a means to avert the imposition of driving bans.
