2024 Author: Eric Donovan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 21:13
VW has canceled a meeting with Greenpeace. Europe's largest car manufacturer responded to a protest in front of the main plant in Wolfsburg. There is also trouble with Deutsche Umwelthilfe.
New dispute between Volkswagen and Greenpeace: Europe's largest car maker canceled a meeting planned for next week between CEO Martin Winterkorn and representatives of the environmental protection organization. According to VW, the reason for this is another protest in front of the Wolfsburg parent plant, in which Greenpeace attacked the company as a climate offender.
VW: No constructive conversation possible
A company spokesman was disappointed: "We would have been delighted about the meeting, because the dialogue with Greenpeace and other environmental organizations is important to us." A few days before the meeting with Winterkorn, they are now "convinced that no constructive discussions can be expected in this atmosphere". The great sympathy that many VW employees have for Greenpeace in principle would be gambled away through malice and polemics.
Greenpeace countered that the action was a general information campaign on the occasion of the UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa. "We firmly assumed that the meeting with Mr. Winterkorn scheduled for December 13th would take place," said energy expert Karsten Smid. The events on the ship "Beluga II" at work are not a reason for the cancellation. In the written announcement for its "Climate Info Days", Greenpeace referred directly to Volkswagen's "lack of environmental responsibility". Shortly before the interview, the group criticized this as bad style: "This is anything but willingness to enter into dialogue."
Environmental aid accuses VW of fine-tuning its carbon footprint
Deutsche Umwelthilfe also accused the carmaker on Wednesday of improving the carbon footprint of its fleet: A self-created category for energy efficiency, which has also been indicated on new cars with a corresponding color scale since December 1, paints a wrong picture. On the VW Internet pages, in addition to the legally stipulated classes “A +” (efficient) to “G” (inefficient), a category “H” could be seen for some models. The environmental association suspected that heavy and high-consumption models should be raised from the lowest to the second lowest level.
After an internal review, VW stated that the confusing labeling was a "regrettable error". "We apologize to our customers for this mistake. We reject the accusation of deliberate consumer deception," said company headquarters. The superfluous class "H" was not published by dealers, but only on the Internet. There it is immediately removed: "The correction has started." (dpa)
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