“Angela Merkel defends diesel cars”

German chancellor Angela Merkel has defended diesel cars as environmentally friendly, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. “Diesel cars are as good for climate protection today as they were yesterday and the day before yesterday,” Merkel said during an election campaign rally in Saarland. The chancellor said it was “perfidious” of the Greens “and partly also of the Social Democrats” to tell people otherwise “because one company did not play by the rules.” German authorities in the past endorsed diesel cars as a climate-friendly alternative due to their lower emissions. Sales figures of cars equipped with the technology have fallen in the aftermath of Volkswagen’s “dieselgate” scandal, referring to the company’s practice of manipulating emissions values of their diesel cars.

Read the article in German here.

For background, see the CLEW dossier The Energiewende and German carmakers and the CLEW factsheet Facts on the German state elections in Saarland.