“This won’t keep the auto mobile”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in the TV debate with her challenger Martin Schulz, scolded Germany’s carmakers for putting the country’s key industry in jeopardy with their manipulation of exhaust emission values, Carsten Knop writes in a commentary for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. But at Germany’s second diesel summit, just one day after the debate, “she just pays 500 million euros more to the already projected 250 million euros” reserved for a sustainable mobility fund, Knop says. The car industry, on the other hand, seems to have no intention to ramp up its contributions to the fund that is aimed at facilitating clean mobility concepts for German cities “and instead hopes that the entire outrage over the companies and their diesel engines will blow over soon,” Knop argues. “A pillar of the world’s export champion will keep crumbling if things continue that way,” Knop suggests.

Read the commentary in German here.

See the CLEW article Merkel at second diesel summit: must avoid driving bans "by all means" and the CLEW factsheet The debate over an end to combustion egnines in Germany for more information.