A Detmold organic farmer failed in court in an attempt to force the car company Volkswagen to stop its combustion engine business. The Detmold district court dismissed a corresponding lawsuit on Friday as entirely unfounded.
The farmer Ulf Allhoff-Cramer had argued that the consequences of climate change would affect his property and his health. He had accused VW of excessive CO2 emissions and demanded that they stop doing so. The car company should sharply reduce the sale of cars and light commercial vehicles with internal combustion engines and stop them altogether in 2030.
However, the judges rejected this plan. In their judgment announced on Friday, they pointed out that it was not certain whether the alleged impairments would be eliminated with the required cessation of the combustion engine business. The court justified its decision by saying that VW cannot be required to rely solely on electric drive technology in the future, since there are other serious alternatives to petrol and diesel engines, such as fuel cell drives.
Greenpeace: Judgment leaves “fatal impression”
Greenpeace was disappointed and announced that they would appeal. “The judgment leaves the fatal impression that the court did not want to deal with the detailed connection between VW’s enormous CO2 emissions and the damage already felt by the plaintiff,” said Greenpeace board member Martin Kaiser. “In view of a galloping climate crisis, however, we consider it essential to have the global responsibility of a group like Volkswagen, with its country-wide CO2 footprint, clarified in court.”
Volkswagen, on the other hand, saw its view confirmed that climate lawsuits against individual companies that had been singled out were the wrong approach and that there was no legal basis for this. “The court confirmed that Volkswagen is carrying out a permitted activity that is conclusively regulated under Union law and that it is not the task of a regional court to decide on such climate policy issues,” said a VW statement. It is the task of the legislature to shape climate protection with its far-reaching effects.
A similar climate lawsuit by Greenpeace before the Braunschweig Regional Court also recently failed. In this process, too, the environmental protection organization wants to go to the next instance. Lawsuits filed by Deutsche Umwelthilfe against BMW in Munich and against Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart were also dismissed.
