Volkswagen is putting a new strategy in the fight against compensation claims of European victims of the exhaustion scandal. The company now explicitly denies that the software used for exhaust gas control has been in breach of EU laws.

"According to Volkswagen, the software contained in vehicles with an EA 189 engine does not constitute an unauthorized shutdown device under European law," a spokesman said.

Volkswagen also rejects the recall notice issued by the German Federal Motor Vehicle Federation (Bundesamt für Kraftfahrzeug - Bundesamt, KBA) that 2.4 million vehicles in Germany have to be called into the workshops in order to put them in a state of law.

"Although this legal view represented by Volkswagen differs from the legal assessment of the Federal Motor Vehicle Authority, Volkswagen deliberately decided not to object to the decision of the Federal Motor Vehicle Authority dated 15 October 2015," the spokesman said.

"In particular, Volkswagen wants to cooperate hand in hand with the regulatory authorities, such as the Federal Motor Transport Authority, in order to implement the coordinated action plan as quickly as possible."

This cooperation should not be burdened by an argument, but the contradiction was recorded. The recall of millions of vehicles is thus only a matter of goodwill.

The contradiction is not commented

Volkswagen had always stressed that there was no legal basis for compensatory payments against the European Commission, which urged compensation for the European car owners concerned.

Rather, the recall of the vehicles, the "technical solutions" are available, for example, in a letter from VW to EU Commissioner Vera Jourová. Now VW claims that there is no problem at all that must be solved.

The Group thus also explicitly contradicts the report of the investigation commission on the VW scandal, which was set up by Federal Minister of Transport Alexander Dobrindt (CSU).

The report from April of this year states: "VW, in contrast to the investigation commission of the BMVI at the meeting on 23 September 2015, acknowledged that there are also inadmissible shut-off devices in certain diesel-type diesel-powered vehicles."

A VW spokesman did not want to comment on the clear contradiction between the statement of the Commission and the group.

The new VW course is quite risky

VW had also started to talk about the "diesel topic" early in the matter of the exhaustion scandal, also for legal reasons. At the end of the day, it will be possible to reach individual words in disputes in court.

Business circles confirmed reports that VW in some court cases explicitly insisted that there could be no talk of manipulation. However, for the Group, the communication system at the beginning of the exhaustion could be disastrous.

For example, a memorandum from the Supervisory Board on the resignation of the former VW CEO, Martin Winterkorn, explicitly mentions that the committee "dealt in detail with regard to the manipulation of exhaust gas values ​​for diesel engines of the VW Group".

VW's takeover is risky, as the company is also openly against the KBA and transport minister Dobrindt. Up until now it had always been emphasized in Wolfsburg that one would of course cooperate with the authorities.

Now there are only two possibilities: Either the new statements from VW that the software in the diesel engine did not violate European laws, do not agree or the investigation report from the Ministry of Transport and the KBA decision are wrong