The European Parliament is to set up a committee to investigate Volkswagen's emissions scandal and whether regulatory oversight of the car industry was too lax.
Members of the European Parliament voteed on the issue today, but lawmakers said that was a formality after leaders of the various political groups decided yesterday to establish the committee.
The inquiry could last for up to a year and will investigate alleged contraventions of European Union law and alleged "maladministration" in the application of the law.
Some 45 members of the European Parliament will sit on the committee.
"For me, the diesel issue mainly has two dimensions. Firstly, it's about private companies organising the largest industrial fraud ever," Claude Turmes, Green Member of the European Parliament, said.
"And secondly, it's about public authorities in member states and on the EU level not intervening despite having relevant information," he added.
EU regulation of the car industry has been under scrutiny since Volkswagen admitted in September it had rigged US tests for nitrogen oxide emissions in diesel vehicles and that up to 11 million vehicles worldwide - most of them in Europe - were fitted with software capable of cheating tests.
Nitrogen oxides reduce air quality and member states have been flouting EU limits on a range of pollutants associated with more than 400,000 premature deaths per year, according to European Commission data.
Meanwhile, Volkswagen said today that engineer Ulrich Eichhorn would return to the company to become its research and development chief under a reshuffle of senior managers.
VW announced in early December that the group's former head of R&D, Ulrich Hackenberg, had left the company more than two months after he was suspended during the firm's diesel emissions scandal.
Eichhorn, 54, joined the company from Ford and led research at the group from 2000 to 2003 before he took over responsibility for technical development at the luxury Bentley unit.
He left the group in 2012 to take up a senior position at the German automobile industry association.
VW said in a statement that the number of top managers reporting to the CEO would almost be halved.
Wolfram Thomas, who has been with the group for 35 years, takes over as production chief.
