The Foundation for Defense of the Citizens Against State Abuses (FACIAS) will sue the Romanian state, namely the Ministry of Environment, Water and Forests (MMAP) and the Ministry of Transport, for the lack of interest to compensate the Romanians who own Volkswagen cars, on which there was installed a software that allowed the manipulation of the tests on setting the applicable emission standards. FACIAS also specifies that it will seek justice to oblige the state institutions to take measures for consumer protection and environmental protection, according to Agerpres.
“FACIAS will forward these days the administrative legal action requesting the competent court to order the Romanian state institutions to take legal action on this abuse and to compel those responsible for the damages caused. (…) We believe that, by delaying the undertaken and announced actions, the state institutions are detrimental to both the image of Romania, who is required to comply with the official requests of the EU, like other Member States, and especially the Romanian customers who in good faith paid all the taxes when they purchased a VW car”, claims Oana Florea, FACIAS representative.
In 2015, Volkswagen officially recognized the installation of a special software that allowed the manipulation of the tests on setting the applicable emission standards to about 11 million vehicles sold worldwide, of which 8.5 million sold in Europe and 500,000 in the US.
Volkswagen agreed to pay compensation of 15 billion US dollars for the 500,000 american owners of cars with diesel engines, but rejected a similar measure for the 8.5 million car owners in Europe who had also emission tests rigging.
According to FACIAS, the European Commission (EC) confirmed that Volkswagen has violated the rights of consumers in 20 member countries and urged all community states to start their own investigations at national level upon diesel passenger cars produced by Volkswagen in order to determine whether and how many EU certified vehicles have been equipped with systems that violate regulations.
“In Romania there are over 50,000 cars that have installed devices or techniques that manipulate the emissions. According to a response sent to FACIAS by the Romanian Auto Registry, only 12.52% of those machines were recalled to address the nonconformities. Nobody however, was compensated. Until now, the state institutions have not provided any information upon the findings of the joint group although they are of relevance to the rights and interests of at least 50,000 Romanian. FACIAS requested information under Law 544 (on free access to information of interest public – editor’s note), but the Ministry of Transport refused to answer thus violating the legislation on free access to public information. The Ministry of Environment has communicated to FACIAS that the Environment Fund Administration has not calculated any damage caused by the sales of vehicles whose emissions were undervalued by mounting devices for manipulating the emissions,” reads the quoted release.
Late last year, the Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Transport decided to set up in Romania a joint working group with the purpose of identifying the legal measures that the Romanian state should impose in the Volkswagen case.
In October 2015, the ministry announced that the damages are estimated at over 30 million euro (123.616.827 lei), for the 105.303 inventoried VW cars with problems,. The calculation took into account that the car tax was paid by buyers for the Euro 5 engine and the car in reality has an Euro 4 engine.
On the other hand, the data estimated by the joint working group set up by the ministry of resort and the Ministry of Transport show that at the time, there have been affected: 1,944 VW units powered by the 1.2 liter engine (damage estimated 588.626 lei) 38.719 VW units with 1.6 liter engine (damage of 24.487.635 lei) and 64.640 VW units with 2.0-liter engine (damage 98.540.565 lei).