EC accuses car makers of colluding to prevent emissions cleaning

The European Commission has accused BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen of breaching European antitrust rules from 2006 to 2014 by colluding to restrict competition on the development of emission cleaning tech for cars.

Margrethe Vestager, commissioner in charge of competition policy, said: "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."

In a report on its preliminary view, the EC believes the companies participated in a collusive scheme to limit the development of the clean technology for diesel and petrol cars sold in the European Economic Area.

The companies are accused of, among other things, not developing selective catalytic reduction systems to reduce harmful nitrogen oxides and delaying the release of ‘Otto’ particle filters to reduce particle emissions from the exhaust gases of petrol passenger cars.

In October 2017, the commission already carried out inspections at the premises of BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen and Audi in Germany, as part of its initial inquiries into possible collusion between car manufacturers on the technological development of passenger cars. The Commission opened an in-depth investigation in September 2018.

If the EU concludes that there is sufficient evidence of an infringement it could impose a fine of up to 10% of a companies’ annual worldwide turnover.