{"id":8127,"date":"2013-07-30T11:30:29","date_gmt":"2013-07-30T11:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=8127"},"modified":"2013-07-30T11:30:29","modified_gmt":"2013-07-30T11:30:29","slug":"french-ban-on-mercedes-angers-germans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=8127","title":{"rendered":"French ban on Mercedes angers Germans"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"mercedes\"<\/a>A ban by France\u2019s socialist government on the registration of several top-end Mercedes-Benz models has infuriated the German luxury carmaker and forced Brussels to step in to try to defuse the growing dispute.<\/div>\n
Sales of thousands of the most prestigious Mercedes cars have been halted in France since Paris last month refused to allow the registration of four new models that include a refrigerant in their air-conditioning systems that has been banned by the EU on environmental grounds.<\/div>\n

The issue escalated late last week when the government invoked an EU \u201csafeguard procedure\u201d, allowing it to act unilaterally to prevent a serious risk to road safety, the environment or public health. It acted after a French court had ordered a 10-day stay of execution for Daimler while the registration block was reviewed.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe registration of Daimler\/Mercedes vehicles classes A, B, CLA and SL remain banned in France as long as the company does not conform to active European regulation,\u201d the environment ministry said.<\/p>\n

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Daimler<\/span> said the French decision \u2013 Paris is to date the only EU country to issue a ban \u2013 was \u201cabsolutely inexplicable\u201d and added it would take further legal action as a result.<\/p>\n

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Officials in Brussels said on Monday they were consulting with Berlin and Paris on the issue and would bring the two sides together in September in a bid to resolve it.<\/p>\n

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The dispute has highlighted the marked contrast between the state of the car industry in the two countries. PSA Peugeot Citro\u00ebn<\/span>, and to a lesser extent Renault<\/span>, have suffered heavily from a big slump in demand for their mainly small and medium-sized cars.<\/p>\n

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Daimler, BMW<\/span> and Volkswagen<\/span> have, meanwhile, surged ahead, profiting from their premium models that have proved highly popular in emerging markets. France was riled last month when Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, blocked an EU move to impose tougher curbs on auto emissions that would have hit German makers of big cars.<\/p>\n

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The Mercedes issue revolves around an air-conditioning coolant called R134a which the EU outlawed from January. Daimler argues that the replacement coolant is dangerously flammable.<\/p>\n

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Jean-Claude Bernard, head of the Association of Mercedes-Benz dealers in France, said the action was politically motivated \u201cto please the greens and damage a German manufacturer\u201d.<\/p>\n

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The coolant is used in 95 per cent of cars in France with air conditioning.<\/p>\n

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The association wrote to the environment minister complaining that 11,000 jobs were at stake and demanding an end to the ban. – FT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A ban by France\u2019s socialist government on the registration of several top-end Mercedes-Benz models has infuriated the German luxury carmaker and forced Brussels to step in to try to defuse the growing dispute. Sales of thousands of the most prestigious Mercedes cars have been halted in France since Paris last month refused to allow the … Continue reading “French ban on Mercedes angers Germans”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,49,3],"tags":[4480,4478,2141,4479,534,51,4477],"class_list":["post-8127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-and-finance","category-europe","category-news","tag-coolant","tag-daimler","tag-environmental-damage","tag-european-car-manufacturers","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-mercedes-benz"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/mercedes.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8127"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8131,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8127\/revisions\/8131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}