Focus (the German news magazine) brought up a curious development with the diesel car business today.
What they say is that a meeting is scheduled for 12 March, with the CDU and SPD prepared to end the two-year long 'mess'.
The basic pieces of the correction:
1. The government (CDU and SPD) would amend the Federal Immission Control Act (a German creation, not a EU creation). The new regulation would require that cities and villages make their own decision on NO2 levels (40 to 50 micrograms per cubic meter) and then determine the driving bans which are appropriate. The measurements would ONLY be taken at busy or high-volume streets.
2. If they ban diesel vehicles....they can only ban the older Euro 4 or 5 standard diesel cars. Euro 6 standard diesel cars (made in the past 7 years) would be allowed to continue on. The Euro 3 standard cars (well over 25 years old)? There's a suggestion that they'd be banned. To be honest, it's rare that you see cars of this age around.
3. Leftover is the retrofitting idea, which some SPD folks are still pushing upon (cost of 1,500 Euro to 2,500 Euro per vehicle). The newer cars (Euro 6) wouldn't have to do it. If this got pushed, it'd be a toss-up if Euro 5 was forced into this situation.
The EU? They apparently are setting this up to help Merkel to get out of the entire mess.
Would this just end by the end of March? Yes, with the retrofitting really the only thing that might drag on for another six to twelve months.
How big a mess did this achieve? Well....I think it hit a peak last month when scientist began to question the numbers, and the science behind the ban. Once that fell into place....I think a number of politicians got worried that the public would figure out that the science didn't support the ban, and judges would lay this back at the feet of the Bundestag to correct.
2 comments:
What "mess?"
You cite nothing to suggest it is a mess... From the outside looking in, it seems rather deliberative decision making. And I thought you only mentioned there was a single scientist on TV who said there was no definitive connection between exhaust and increased deaths.
Are you living in Trump world where one scientist says one thing against the collective decision making of numerous scientists, and therefore the one is correct?
Then again, no one can prove definitively that it was the cigarette habit that gave one any various cancers and Trump's VP Pence has publicly stated so.
The 'mess' driven for almost two years involved city-by-city decisions (not a national or even a state decision) that was going to ban diesel car entry into German cities. With over 14-million diesel cars in the country, it was leading to a massive amount of chaos. Imagine leaving your home...driving 50 kilometers to work, but then stopping at the border of the metropolitan city because entry was 'forbidden', then parking in some massive parking lot and riding the rest of the way via some tram/subway/bus. This led cities to all request tons of money to attempt to run a 'free' transport system (as Luxembourg went to). If it'd been five or six cities...it might have been affordable. At last count, more than fifty German cities had some ban on the table being discussed.
So put yourself into the shoes of owning a diesel vehicle. You've got a TuV stamp on the vehicle which says it's a legal and safe vehicle to operate, as defined by the national laws on vehicles. You spent 20k to 40k Euro to buy the vehicle. Your work requires you to enter Stuttgart, and you wake up to find that the vehicle is basically worthless...re-sale value has disappeared....the national government unwilling to resolve any part of the mess....and the policy of a ban differing from city to city. Some cities were developing the ban just for certain parts of town (if you lived in that section and owned a diesel car which you parked in front of your house, it begged questions). Others had ban ideas going on which revolved just certain streets.
A national topic but virtually all of the leadership avoiding this discussion for months. If someone had said banning would occur, and the nation would offer compensation for the vehicles affected...but that wasn't going to occur. If someone had said that a 'filter-box' would be developed and solve the particle problem, with the cost covered in some way by the government, it would have resolved some frustration, but that wasn't going to be a government policy. All of the ban-chatter was going to be burdened off to the private consumer, with no real care about how people organized their lives to reach work each day.
In the end, prior to this suggested resolution...it had become this long complicated saga, without any path for the diesel vehicle owner, and a massive transport problem in how to get millions to work each day. Countless hours were wasted on chatter, and owners grumbling at the behavior of politicians and a lack of a national policy.
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