To force the main German car manufacturers, including the giant Volkswagen, to accelerate their transition to a less polluting industrial model, environmental organizations in the country announced that they were preparing a legal offensive on Friday.

“Business electrification plans are too unambitious and too slow.

They are not enough to avoid the climate crisis ”, denounced Martin Kaiser, director of Greenpeace Germany, which will lead the action alongside the association Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH).

The two organizations have prepared complaints against manufacturers Volkswagen, Daimler, BMW and the oil and gas company Wintershall Dea.

Towards the end of thermal engines?

These lawsuits will be a first, they explained at a press conference, because they are based on the decision handed down in the spring by the Constitutional Court of Karlsruhe which made climate protection a fundamental right. Justice had thus forced Angela Merkel's government to strengthen its climate objectives, as part of an emergency procedure. DUH and Greenpeace want in particular to force manufacturers to completely cease the sale of heat engines in 2030.

Under pressure from ever more demanding environmental standards, manufacturers have almost all unveiled a release schedule for diesel and gasoline vehicles, several years ahead and rarely on all international markets at the same time.

"The companies we are focusing on here have not set an absolutely binding phase-out or phase-out date" for combustion models, says Remo Klinger, one of the lawyers who prepared the complaints.

"It is time that we finally demand accounts"

These will be filed if companies do not respond in the coming weeks to the written injunction sent by environmental organizations. For Sascha Müller-Kraenner, one of the co-directors of DUH, "it is time that we finally hold to account those who have been responsible for billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases for decades". At the company Wintershall, it is asked "not to open any more new oil and gas fields by 2026 at the latest".

In addition to the Karlsruhe court ruling, the organizations are drawing on Dutch case law which in May ruled that big companies have their own climate responsibility and condemned oil giant Shell to do more.

"We see no basis for this injunction measure," responded Daimler.

Like BMW, the manufacturer recalls "to be clearly committed to the objectives of the Paris agreement on the climate and therefore in the decarbonization of the automotive industry".

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