A first step towards a possible compensation of several hundred thousand French customers. French justice said this Thursday admissible a group action against the German giant Volkswagen in the dieselgate case.
In his order that AFP has obtained, the Tribunal de Soissons (Aisne) rejected most of the arguments of the defense of Volkswagen, according to whom this procedure was inadmissible because it arrived too late and aimed at bad companies.
The Confederation of Consumption, Housing and Living Environment (CLCV), a French consumer defense association, has initiated this procedure for several years against several companies in the Volkswagen Galaxy. It targets in particular its subsidiary Volkswagen France, which sits in Villers-Cotterêts in Aisne, hence the fact that the Soissons court was called upon to rule on its admissibility.
This “very important decision” will allow to go “on the debate of the responsibility of Volkswagen companies”, reacted to AFP Me Hugo Delage, one of the lawyers of the CLCV.
“An isolated and non -final decision,” says Volkswagen
The court also considered that all the brands of the German automobile giant marketed in France were concerned, that is to say not only Volkswagen, but also Audi, Skoda and Seat. If the CLCV procedure was completed under this enlarged perimeter, owners of nearly 950,000 group diesel vehicles in France at the time of the dieselgate scandal at the end of 2015 could be eligible for financial repairs.
The path promises to be still long, because the admissibility of the group action does not prejudge Volkswagen’s responsibility on the substance. “This is an isolated and non -final decision, the motivation of which is partly questionable” reacted Volkswagen on Thursday in a declaration sent to AFP, specifying that “the companies concerned therefore reserve the right to appeal”.
“The Volkswagen AG companies, Volkswagen Group France and Volkswagen Group Automotive Retail France remain convinced that their responsibility in this case cannot be retained,” added the group. They believe that “French consumers have not suffered any prejudice, which they will demonstrate before the Soissons judicial court which will now have to judge the background of the file”, continues the same source.
More than 30 billion euros already spent
Volkswagen had admitted in the fall of 2015 that it had equipped 11 million of its diesel vehicles with software hiding emissions sometimes exceeding up to 40 times authorized standards. Since the break-up of this global scandal, the group has paid more than 30 billion euros in reminders of vehicles, legal proceedings and compensation, especially in the United States.
Volkswagen is also prosecuted in criminal in France, like other manufacturers accused of having also rigged the engines of their diesel vehicles.
The Paris prosecutor’s office recently required Volkswagen’s dismissal to the criminal court for deception in the dieselgate case. The group requests the cancellation of these criminal proceedings in France, believing that they overlap with a procedure in Germany completed in 2018, at the end of which Volkswagen AG had paid a fine of one billion euros.
Does the French criminal procedure not likely to duplicate the civil procedure of the CLCV? No, according to me, believing that these two parallel actions “do not have the same nature, not the same purpose and do not necessarily imply the same parties”.