BERLIN, July 28 (Xinhua) -- Authorities in Stuttgart have the right to impose an outright ban on diesel vehicles, the city's administrative court ruled on Friday.
The court hereby agreed with the non-governmental environmental and consumer protection organization Environmental Action Germany (DUH) which had filed a lawsuit against the state government of Baden-Wuerttemberg, lamenting that measures to lower air pollution in its capital Stuttgart were insufficient.
The administrative court's judges thus prioritized the protection of life and health of citizens in the hometown of carmakers Mercedes-Benz and Porsche over the property rights and freedom of action enjoyed by owners of diesel cars.
DUH activists had sought an outright ban on such vehicles following the announcement by city policymakers of a less radical strategy to combat urban air pollution back in 2015. They argued that legal thresholds for nitrogen oxide levels had been regularly surpassed in areas affected by traffic congestion for years.
Several cities in Germany, including Munich, are currently considering bans following revelations that their air pollution levels were in breach of EU limits. German carmakers are at the center of an ongoing international scandal in which they stand accused of having installed illegal software in diesel vehicles to falsify emissions levels during test settings.
Friday's ruling does not explicitly demand an immediate ban, but concurs with the DUH that the only effective way to rapidly improve air quality would be the full removal of older diesel vehicles from traffic. The planned retrofitting of Diesel vehicles from 2020 was considered too little, too late.
Instead the presiding judge Wolfgang Kern and his colleagues called for urgent action, such as the introduction of a so-called "Blue Placard" which would effectively amount to driving bans for a part of vehicles in the city.
Such a placard would be needed in order to gain access to heavily congested inner cities and would only be granted to vehicles with relatively low emission levels.
The coalition government between the Christian Democratic Union and Green party in Baden-Wuerttemberg said it would assess the ruling carefully before deciding whether to appeal.
A speaker of the state transport ministry described the verdict as a "very complex ruling."
For now, the state government of Baden-Wuerttemberg wants to wait for the court's written argumentation due to be released in August. It is likely that the case will subsequently be passed on to the higher judicial authority of Germany's federal administrative court in Leipzig.
The DUH has also filed similar lawsuits in other major German cities such as Dusseldorf, Aachen, Bonn and Cologne. North Rhine-Westphalia has referred a case to the Federal Administrative Court with the organization's consent in order to determine whether municipal governments are legally entitled to impose bans on diesel cars.
Older diesel-powered vehicles are responsible for the bulk of nitrogen oxide pollution in urban areas. Nitric oxide is a toxic compound which is tied to a range of respiratory diseases.
Originally, Baden-Wuerttemberg had responded to the DUH's lawsuit by being the first state in Germany to announce diesel bans. It then backtracked from that position, however, hoping to solve the problem by encouraging carmakers to voluntarily retrofit vehicles.
On August 2, the German government will hold a "diesel summit" with the representatives of the German automotive industry in order to discuss how to lower nitrogen oxide pollution caused by traffic.
Although manufacturers including Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and Audi have announced their intention to recall and upgrade millions of vehicles, Barbara Hendricks, the German Minister for the Environment, warned that the car industry was at a "turning point" and outright diesel bans were still on the table.
