July 24,2017
Der Spiegel / Spiegel OnlineThe cartel Germany’s most important carmakers have met in
“secret workshops” since the 1990s in order to
coordinate their exhaust gas treatment systems and collude to fix technology, costs and suppliers, weekly news magazine Der Spiegel and associated website Spiegel Online report. “This could amount to one of the largest cases of cartel agreements in Germany’s economic history,” Frank Dohmen and Dietmar Hawranek write on Spiegel Online.
A “sort-of voluntary disclosure” made last year by the country’s biggest carmaker VW revealed that
Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, BMW and Daimler have all been implicated in the secret meetings in which “agreements were made
to systematically undermine free competition”, the article says.
What might turn out to be especially troublesome for Germany’s most important industry is that the
carmakers apparently also agreed on important technical details of their diesel exhaust gas treatment and therefore jointly “laid the basis of the diesel scandal”.Süddeutsche ZeitungAppearance and reality
Almost no other country hosts as many important car manufacturers side-by-side as Germany and, with about 800,000 employees nationwide, the industry “has an invaluable social responsibility”, Thomas Fromm writes in a commentary for Süddeutsche Zeitung.
In order to stand out from their national competitors, German car brands have long sought to promote their uniqueness and “
sell emotions alongside steel sheets and horsepower”, Fromm argues. “One has to bear in mind this strategy of distinction to comprehend why the latest allegations over forming a cartel strike the industry at its core,” he writes.
If Germany’s most important carmakers have colluded to fix technology and costs since the 1990s, “they not only would have fooled their customers.
They would also have ridiculed their precious brand-claims and thereby their company’s identity as well”. BMW, VW and Daimler shares take hard hit
Shares of German carmakers BMW, VW and Daimler were falling substantially on Monday after allegations emerged on Friday that the companies operated a cartel, followed by an EU probe into the affair, news agency Reuters reports.
“The European Commission said on Saturday that European Union antitrust regulators had received a tip-off about another possible cartel,” the article says.
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