News Digest Item
09 Mar 2017

“Angela Merkel: Emissions scandal not a government failure”

German Bundestag

German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected the suggestion that German carmaker VW’s emissions cheating was a “failure of government”. The failure was with VW, not the German state, she said in a hearing before an inquiry committee of the federal parliament. On diesel technology, Merkel said there was a conflict of objectives between lowering climate-harmful CO₂ emissions and lowering nitrogen oxide emissions, which are harmful to the people’s health. The diesel engine was “always a good option” to lower CO₂ emissions, said Merkel.

Find the press release in German here and a separate FT article in English here.

For background read the CLEW factsheet Dieselgate forces VW to embrace green mobility.

All texts created by the Clean Energy Wire are available under a “Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)” . They can be copied, shared and made publicly accessible by users so long as they give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.

Journalism for the energy transition

Get our Newsletter
Join our Network
Find an interviewee