German cities get green light to ban diesels

DIESEL cars could be banned from German cities within weeks following a landmark court ruling.

In a decision it is thought could inspire similar moves across Europe, Germany’s highest administrative court ruled yesterday that individual municipalities could ban older diesel cars from their streets in order to bring pollution levels down.

The ruling sent shares in German carmakers tumbling and caused widespread concern among diesel car owners that their vehicles could lose almost all their second-hand value if they are banned from city streets.

Hamburg, Germany’s second largest city, said it would impose a ban on some of its most polluted streets “within a few weeks”, and other major cities, including Düsseldorf and Stuttgart, the home of Mercedes and Porsche, are expected to follow.

Angela Merkel sought to calm public concerns. “It’s about individual cities where more needs to be done,” she said. “It’s not really about the whole country or all the car owners in Germany.”

Under the ruling, cities in which air pollution exceeds the official limits will be able to issue their own bans on older diesel cars without authority from the central government.

Certain businesses that rely on diesel vehicles will be granted an exemption. But the court ruled that diesel owners whose vehicles were banned were not entitled to compensation.

At the moment there is no clear definition of which diesel models will be affected, and there were calls for Mrs Merkel’s government to introduce a new national “blue badge” to indicate which cars are clean.

Shares in Volkswagen initially fell 2.3 per cent, BMW fell 1 per cent and Daimler, the company that makes Mercedes, fell 0.6 per cent.