The Foundation for Defending of Citizens Against State Abuses (FACIAS) has announced on Thursday in a press release that it will sue the Romanian state, namely the Ministry of Environment, Water and Forests (MMAP) and the Ministry of Transport for the lack of interest in order to compensate Romanians owning Volkswagen cars, on which the software that allowed the handling of tests on emission was installed.
FACIAS also specifies that it will seek to make the justice to force the state institutions to take measures for consumer protection and for environmental protection.
“We believe that, by delaying the undertaken and announced actions the state institutions damage to both the image of Romania, who is required to comply with the EU’s official requests, like other Member States, and especially to the Romanian customers in good faith who paid all taxes when buying a VW car,” FACIAS representative Oana Florea has said.
In 2015, Volkswagen group officially admitted of installing special software that allowed handling tests on emissions applicable to about 11 million vehicles sold worldwide, of which 8.5 million were sold in Europe and 500,000 in the US.
According to FACIAS, the European Commission has confirmed that Volkswagen violated the rights of consumers in 20 member countries and urged all Members to start their own investigations at national level on diesel passenger cars produced by Volkswagen in order to determine whether and how many EU certified vehicles have been equipped with systems that violate the regulations.
“In Romania there are over 50,000 cars having installed manipulation devices. According to a response sent by the Romanian Auto Registry to FACIAS, only 12.52% of those cars were recalled to address the issue. Nobody was compensated. Until now, state institutions have not provided any information on the findings from the joint group, although they concern the rights and interests of at least 50,000 Romanians,” the release reads.
In October 2015, the ministry announced that the damage estimated by the Romanian state in VW case for the 105,303 cars with problems are of over EUR 30 million (RON 123,616,827). The calculation took into account that the car tax was paid by buyers for Euro 5 engine and the car in reality had Euro 4 engine.