MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th April, 2019) The European Commission filed on Friday a preliminary statement of objections to car manufacturing companies BMW, Daimler and VW, saying that the companies may have breached EU antitrust rules between 2006 to 2014 and colluded to restrict competition on the development of clean emissions technology for passenger cars.
"Companies can cooperate in many ways to improve the quality of their products. However, EU competition rules do not allow them to collude on exactly the opposite: not to improve their products, not to compete on quality. We are concerned that this is what happened in this case and that Daimler, VW and BMW may have broken EU competition rules. As a result, European consumers may have been denied the opportunity to buy cars with the best available technology. The three car manufacturers now have the opportunity to respond to our findings," Margrethe Vestager, the commissioner in charge of the competition policy, said, as quoted in a published statement.
According to the commission, the three manufacturers participated in a collusive scheme between 2006 to 2014 to limit the development and roll-out of emission cleaning technology for new diesel and gasoline passenger cars sold in the European Union.
In particular, the commission said that the companies had aimed at restricting competition on innovation for two emission cleaning technology systems � one that reduces harmful nitrogen oxides emissions from diesel cars and the other that reduces harmful emissions from gasoline cars � thereby denying consumers the opportunity to buy less polluting cars, despite the technology being available.
The commission opened an in-depth investigation into the possible collusion of the car manufacturers in September 2018. The statement of objections is a formal step of the European Commission of presenting suspected violations of EU regulations to the companies involved in the case. The companies are given the opportunity to present their defense based on the preliminary findings. If, however, the commission finds the companies guilty of the accusations, it can adopt a decision prohibiting the conduct and imposing a fine of up to 10 percent of the company's annual worldwide turnover.
