Hello and welcome to another MLEX podcast. I'm Sam Wilkin, Brussels news editor, and today we're going to talk about the EU's new antitrust investigation into German carmakers.

The European Commission is looking into whether BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche colluded to hold back the development of

emissions technologies. It's far from a typical cartel case and so it's bound to cause some

controversy. I'm joined now by Matthew Newman and Nicholas Hurst, who've been following the case

closely. Hello, Matthew and Nicholas. Hello, Sam. Matthew, just set the scene here.

What's the context?

How did this investigation come about?

Well, you've probably heard that the German auto industry has been under scrutiny for many years.

And this is because of the Dieselgate scandal.

And that involved Volkswagen.

And in particular, the allegation that the car maker manipulated the results of devices that are used to monitor the pollution from diesel cars.

So I just wanted to say from the outset that this probe doesn't have anything to do with Dieselgate,

simply because that's a separate investigation,

and the European Competition Authority is not involved in that.

But they're related in some way, then.

Is that how it started, how they got the idea?

It's related in the sense that there was increased scrutiny of these car makers.

So when you look at the idea about car companies getting together, colluding,

working together in some sort of anti-competitive way, that actually is part of the context of Dieselgate.

There's no direct link in terms of sharing information on the defeat devices.

But what there is evidence of is that they were working together on the development of clean technology.

And that technology is essentially used to clean up particulates in the actual diesel fumes

...