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Cars: Minister Gavrilescu is against any retroactive taxation of owners of Volkswagen cars
Minister for Environment, Waters and Forests Gratiela Gavrilescu is against any retroactive taxation of owners of Volkswagen cars, if systems that infringe the EU regulations are found.
"It seems abnormal to me that a bona-fide citizen who paid a lot for that brand and purchased such a vehicle be liable in the future for [the environment stamp] for a Euro 6 car that subsequently proves to be Euro 4 or Euro 5. Measures will be taken after carrying out the analysis based on the procedure presented by experts in the joint groups of the two ministries" [Transport and Environment - editor's note] Gavrilescu told the Parliament plenum on Monday.
The joint working group announced by the Environment Ministry last Friday to analyse the local situation of Volkswagen has been set up, she mentioned. "There are representatives of the National Agency for Environmental Protection, of the National Environment Guard, and if necessary a representative of the Environment Fund Administration will join them. The representatives of the Romanian Automotive Register are still to be designated. In the near future (...) we will establish a working procedure allowing the experts to propose the way we, as a EU member state, can find exactly how many Volkswagen cars entered the country and see whether their engines are compliant," the minister detailed.
The European Commission has asked last week the 28 EU member states to start their own investigations on Volkswagen's diesel models, to establish if and to what extent the group's vehicles registered in the European Union were equipped with devices that break the EU regulations.
The Volkswagen group, the biggest automaker in the world, is accused of manipulating emission tests in the United States, by installing software that allowed its cars to meet the pollution standards while tested, although not in normal operation. Volkswagen officials admitted the fact and announced 11 million of its diesel vehicles worldwide avoided pollution standards by such means. Recent models are involved, including Volkswagen's Jetta, Beetle and Passat, and Audi A3.