Frankfurt (AFP)

The giant Volkswagen will face on Monday the first major consumer trial in Germany, bringing together hundreds of thousands of customers seeking redress for their faked diesel cars, four years after the outbreak of "dieselgate".

The hearing, which is expected to last several years, opens Monday at 08:00 GMT at the Regional Court of Brunswick, about thirty kilometers from the historic headquarters of Volkswagen in Wolfsburg (Lower Saxony).

Nearly 450,000 people signed up for this group application - the first of its kind in Germany, following a procedure adopted in the wake of dieselgate.

The VZBV Consumer Association acts as the sole applicant and accuses the car group of deliberately harming its customers by unknowingly installing software that makes the vehicle look less polluting than it actually is.

This trial is for the moment the most important in Germany in this scandal drawer, which continues to haunt the manufacturer as he tries to turn the page by focusing on the electric.

Specifically, the judges will decide about fifty points, but the main question will be whether Volkswagen has "caused harm" and acted "unethically."

Klaus Müller, director of the VZBV, says he is "convinced" to see the court conclude in this direction. But Volkswagen argues that "there is no damage and therefore no basis for this request".

- 30 billion euros -

"Even today, hundreds of thousands of vehicles are used" on the roads, insists Martina de Lind van Wijngaarden, lawyer of the company.

Even if it proves unfavorable to Volkswagen, the judgment will not lead directly to a refund: each registered consumer must then assert his rights individually.

The review of this collective motion is expected to last at least until 2023 due to a possible appeal to the Federal Court, according to Volkswagen. Individual procedures may take more than one year thereafter.

To shorten the procedure, the VZBV is "open" to an amicable agreement but "in this case, Volkswagen should still pay a significant sum," Müller told AFP.

The manufacturer believes that such an agreement is "unimaginable" because of the heterogeneity of the situations: part of the files would be duplicates or concern customers residing abroad or having bought their car after the revelation of the case .

Finally, in parallel with the consolidated procedure, 61,000 individual applications were lodged in Germany, some of which resulted in extra-judicial agreements.

The scandal dates back to 2015, when Volkswagen confessed to having equipped 11 million vehicles with faking software. It has since cost the group more than 30 billion euros in legal fees, fines and compensation, disbursed for the most part in the United States.

- Transformation -

For now, the manufacturer has paid in Germany only three fines totaling 2.3 billion euros, but remains under threat of a cascade of civil and criminal proceedings.

Thus, in a lawsuit committed a year ago, investors claim compensation for the dramatic fall in the stock market price after the breakdown of the dieselgate.

Earlier this week, current boss Herbert Diess and the chairman of the supervisory board of the Hans Dieter Pötsch group were sent before the courts for manipulation of the stock market. Ex-boss Martin Winterkorn, who had to resign in 2015, was also fired for "fraud".

Beyond the judicial front, the scandal has accelerated the decline of diesel and diesel cars may be banned from several German cities because of their level of pollution nitrogen oxides (NOx).

For Volkswagen, the diesel scandal "belongs to the history of the group" in the same way as "the ladybug and the Golf", recognizes Ralf Brandstätter, head of the VW brand.

But he assures that the group has "profoundly changed": the manufacturer put 30 billion euros on its new range to "regain the esteem of society."

"The diesel crisis was for us a catalyst for transformation," Brandstätter recently told AFP in an interview.

© 2019 AFP