Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2015-10-06-Speech-2-640-000"
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"en.20151006.35.2-640-000"2
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"Madam President, for the vast majority of consumers buying a car is the single biggest purchase they make in their lives after they have bought a home. This Volkswagen scandal is not just about money. It is about health as well.
Cheating the standards brings a massive and fundamental breach of trust. For the market to work properly there must be trust – trust that a service or a good is what the supplier claims it is, trust that it complies with the relevant laws or regulations, trust that your competitors are acting honestly, and trust that official bodies have done their jobs properly. This principle has to apply all across the single market – all across all 28 Member States – and each of these standards must be applied in every country, because once we lose the trust of consumers it cannot easily be restored.
Currently Volkswagen customers face chaos. They do not know if the car that they own is going to be recalled or upgraded or what they will be paid. Consumers who are looking to buy a new car from another company are also very uncertain. They want to know whether or not it is just Volkswagen who has used defeat devices or if there are other companies involved. They want to know why officials did not act sooner. Who knew what? They want to know why this was discovered in the US before the EU. Consumers want answers to all those questions and I agree with them.
We need drivers to use diesel cars and to have confidence that when they purchase one they have made the correct choice. We cannot let the actions of one company tarnish an entire sector. So we need a full investigation, an investigation that people can have trust in, across the entire single market.
I know that it is not possible to regulate away fraud, but proper oversight can minimise it. National regulators are required by law to enforce legislation. If our Member States agree laws, they must implement them because the strength of any approval across the EU, including type approval, is only as strong as the weakest link. Every single national regulator must work to the same high standard. Otherwise, there is a race to the regulatory bottom, and turning a blind eye in one Member State means that those goods can be sent across all 28. So our Member States must work together in a coordinated fashion.
We know that the emission tests are already being updated. We have known for many years that the emissions test and fuel efficiency claims do not represent real-world experience. That is why the Commission is already due to announce new testing processes by the end of this year. Indeed, early last month, before this broke out, Commission officials came into my committee to discuss what they were doing, but without any details.
The Commission needs to make these announcements soon, because manufacturers need to know what they have to deliver, and they have to deliver in line with the new tests any new cars that are approved after the end of next year.
The Commission must also keep Parliament involved. Parliament has a role to scrutinise delegated acts, and 500 million people expect us to do our job properly. I get a bit fed up with secondary legislation being written in the Commission but then arriving in Parliament very much last-minute with some comment saying not to worry as it is just detail. People expect us to do our job, to scrutinise both the primary and the secondary legislation, and we must get the details right. We have to have time to understand it and we have to have time to listen to both consumers and manufacturers, and to expert advice too if necessary.
In Parliament we talk a lot about better lawmaking. The Commission is, I believe, trying to deliver better lawmaking. We need to make that happen too and we cannot let this happen again."@en1
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