INTRODUCTION

The impact of the Dieselgate case in Italy has been limited to date. While in other countries the case has generally had severe and significant outcomes, in Italy it has not yet yielded remarkable results.

Four years after Volkswagen AG admitted in September 2015 that it cheated American diesel emissions tests, Volkswagen Group Italia (VGI) – that is the Italian subsidiary of Volkswagen AG – is still battling criminal investigations and investors’ lawsuits. In 2016, public prosecutors in the Italian city of Verona, where VGI has its headquarters, brought charges against former VGI managers over their roles in the Dieselgate scandal. According to the newspaper reports, the Italian public prosecutors have accused the former president of the board of directors, the former chief executive officer and the former general manager of a particularly serious fraud when they failed to stop the malicious practice in Italy, which dates back to 2009. The prosecutors state that VGI managers would have been conscious that Volkswagen AG was selling manipulated vehicles in Italy by installing a software which was designed to hide the real reason for the increased levels of pollutants in normal vehicle usage.

Preliminary investigations are being carried out by public prosecutors. But those investigations have not yet been completed. The technical report ordered by the Verona court in 2016 was recently filed. In light of the newspapers, in March 2019 the experts appointed by the court would have realised the software changes constituted a defeat device prohibited under Italian law. Notwithstanding this conclusion, the appointed experts would also have stated that the decision of Volkswagen AG to offer to the cars’ owners involved in the Dieselgate scandal the substitution of the responsible software with a correct one would have significantly reduced the detrimental consequences of defeated devices. It is worth noting that if VGI managers will be found guilty of the crimes they are accused of, that outcome will be also relevant as a potential indicator of their civil liability in the Dieselgate case, because it is highly likely that a civil court would be strongly influenced by the reasons to declare the VGI managers’ criminal liability. But this kind of judicial ascertainment lacks in Italy because Italian civil judges have not yet ruled on that case.