EU targets Germany and UK for not fining VW's emissions fraud

Cars that run on petrol or diesel are meant to be a rarity by the year 2050. Progress is slow. But some Nordic cities have radical visions of how a "Hyperloop" could change that.

Long-term policies will strengthen our competitiveness and create more jobs, while combating climate change in the long run.

Environment ministers will try to agree this week to speed up the process to sign up to the Paris agreement. Otherwise it would not be present at the table of the signatories at a conference in November.

One year ago, it emerged that VW had cheated on emission tests in what came to be called the Dieselgate affair. EUobserver looked at how it happened and what the EU did to stop it.

“You will definitely see some infringement procedures next month,” said commissioner Bienkowska in Strasbourg on Monday.

An Italian report triggered by the Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal finds Fiat cars emitting more than double the EU limit. The report was finished in July, but has not been made public.

A year after Dieselgate broke, millions of polluting cars are still on the road. Not everyone will adhere to the Volkswagen recall, and some who did want the cheating software back.

A leaked EU memo from 2012 shows that officials warned the office of former industry chief Antonio Tajani on possible illegal car emissions discrepancies, but he did nothing to investigate.

Carmakers claim they don't know what "normal" driving conditions are in terms of EU law. But their own lobby group already decided 14 years ago.

French committee concluded that car manufacturers “systematically” used defeat devices. Market surveillance in the EU was “largely insufficient”.

The 2012 request is somewhat ironic, considering that it has since emerged some car companies themselves have misled the public about how their cars' emissions filters worked.

MEPs' visit to emissions lab in Ispra did not yield a lot of new evidence, inquiry committee chairwoman said, as VW announced billions of euro in profit.