Furor over VW tests on monkeys
FRANKFURT, Germany — Volkswagen suspended its chief lobbyist Tuesday amid a growing furor over experiments on monkeys that were meant to promote the virtues of diesel-powered vehicles, but now threaten to further undermine the German car industry and to increase political instability in Berlin.
Thomas Steg, the suspended Volkswagen executive, is a former aide to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. The widening controversy about the monkey research highlighted what critics have called the overly cozy relationship between the country’s carmakers and the government.
Adding to the political fallout, the European Commission declared Tuesday that Germany and eight other countries had not done enough to combat dismal air quality. The commission said it planned to pursue legal action against the nine countries at the European Union’s highest court for their chronic failure to enforce air quality standards.
Merkel, through her spokesman, was among the political leaders and auto industry executives who in recent days condemned the experiments at a lab in Albuquerque in which monkeys were exposed to diesel exhaust. The project was financed by German carmakers, who wanted to show that diesel cars were less of a threat to human health than groups such as the World Health Organization have claimed.
A separate project financed by the carmakers subjected human volunteers in Germany to doses of nitrogen dioxide, one of diesel’s most noxious byproducts.
Environmental groups and other critics of Volkswagen said the suspension of Steg, whose formal title at Volkswagen is head of external relations and sustainability, made him a sacrificial lamb meant to insulate the company’s top managers from consequences.
These critics drew parallels with the Volkswagen emissions scandal, in which the company initially said that a small number of rogue engineers were responsible for installing software intended to dupe regulators. German prosecutors have since identified dozens of suspects.
“They are again playing the game where the subordinates were the culprits,” said Christian Strenger, a former member of a commission that wrote Germany’s rules on corporate governance. Strenger is among the people suing Volkswagen for violating its legal obligations to shareholders.