EU
#Merkel chun cainteanna #Diesel a thionól de réir mar a éilíonn comhghuaillithe socrú crua-earraí
German Chancellor Angela Merkel held a high-level meeting on Sunday (23 September) to discuss whether to require the car industry to carry out costly hardware upgrades for older diesel vehicles to reduce inner-city pollution, government sources said, scríobhann Douglas Busvine.
The meeting comes as a deadline of the end of the month set by Merkel looms to stave off bans on older vehicles and follows a report by the Spiegel news weekly that Merkel supports such hardware retrofits, which would cost thousands of euro per vehicle.
Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer, meanwhile, favours incentives for drivers of older diesel vehicles to trade them in for newer, models in order to reduce overall pollution caused by the fleet of cars on the road.
Election politics are playing a role in the debate, with Scheuer’s Christian Social Union facing what could be its worst result in decades in Bavaria, the southern state that it rules and that is home to carmakers BMW (BMWG.DE) and Audi (NSUG.DE).
The state of Hesse also goes to the polls in October and there Chief Minister Volker Bouffier, a member of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, is fighting a court order to ban older diesels from the streets of Frankfurt.
Hesse introduced a motion on Friday in the upper house of parliament, which represents Germany’s 16 federal states, demanding hardware retrofits.
Other states have called for some form of burden sharing but all agree that the cost of the hardware upgrades should not fall on drivers, who have seen the resale value of diesel cars plummet following an emissions test-cheating scandal.
BMW declined to comment. A spokesman for Volkswagen, which owns Audi, said: “Taking purely the technicals facts into consideration, refits are the wrong solution.”
Daimléir (DAIGn.DE) did not respond to a request for comment.
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