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Important step towards better protection of health and environment and to support municipalities

The European Commission is drawing drastic consequences from the emissions scandal. After the VW scandal and recently discovered further manipulations on cars, the EU Commission will shortly propose a completely new monitoring system. This was announced by the responsible Commissioner Elżbieta Bienkowska in a letter to the spokesperson of the largest group in the European Parliament (EPP Christian Democrats) in the environmental committee Dr. Peter Liese. Among other things, it is proposed that the European authority takes a good look on the member states' inspection work. Previously this was purely a national task. In addition, member states may check each other. That means, for example if in Paris fine dust alarm appears, German authorities can check if French or Italian cars actually comply with the pollution limit. Moreover, economic relations between testing companies and the car industry shell are unbundled. It has been widely criticized in the past that dependencies of the testing companies to single car companies do exist. "I highly welcome the announcement by the Commissioner. It was shameful for the EU and its member states that we were dependent on the assistance of the United States, to detect the manipulation at VW. This has revealed the weaknesses of our system. We need to pay more attention in Europe to the implementation of existing laws. This has always been a priority of my group. 400.000 people die prematurely because of air pollution. We may not leave municipalities which have difficulties complying with European clean air policy on their own" Liese said.

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Juncker's Commission after hearings even stronger than before

"The decision of the ENVI and ITRE committees in European Parliament makes Juncker's commission even stronger than before", this is the conclusion of the spokesperson in the Environmental Committee of the biggest political group in the European Parliament (EPP – Christian democrats), Peter Liese.
The Parliament's committees rejected Commission's designated Vice-president Alenka Bratusek with 13:112 votes. The proposed candidate for climate and energy, Miguel Arias Canete, was approved by a majority of 77 to 48 votes.

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Employees, component supplier and municipalities suffer / Stricter market surveillance needed / no condemnation of Diesel

In today's plenary debate on the VW emission scandal environmental and health spokesperson of the biggest group in the European Parliament (EPP-Christian democrats) Dr. Peter Liese emphasized effects on both health and environment. "The responsible persons of VW wanted to save some money, but they did it at the expense of environment and health. Nitrogen oxides are the main cause for ozone formation and there are causing constriction of the bronchi, aggravation of asthma and many other health problems. Due to the misconduct of the responsible persons the economic damage is now bigger than the costs would have been by complying with values. ", said Liese who is angry about the behaviour of the responsible persons at VW: " The fact that the former Chairman Winterkorn insists on his full pension and plays still an active role in the holding is intolerable for me. We need a deep examination and all people involved have to be held responsible", Liese added. At the same time it has to be examined why European authorities did not discover the fraud. "We have much more Diesel vehicles over here than in the US. However, US authorities found the problem, we did not. And some companies are very quiet in the moment. The European Commission has to take care of that", Liese said.

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EPP in favour of list proposed by European Commission / Adoption of objection would have punished innovative industry

The Environmental Committee (ENVI) of the European Parliament today rejected an objection tabled by the Greens against the so called carbon leakage list proposed by the European Commission some weeks ago. EPP members of ENVI support the list of the Commission, Committee now shares this view.

„We are happy with today's decision of ENVI. Fortunately, the attempt to reject the list proposed by the Commission was not successful“, said Dr. Peter Liese, spokesperson of Christian-democratic EPP group in ENVI, and Norbert Lins, the responsible EPP-MEP for the file.     
"A rejection of the proposed carbon leakage list or only a further insecurity would have penalised those who invested in modern technology. This would have a negative impact on the European Emission Trading Scheme", said Liese right after the votes. 

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