Photo: DPAWith six weeks to go until a general election, Chancellor Angela Merkel and her main rival are taking aim at Germany's scandal-hit car bosses, in a race to reassure voters they won't have to pay for the sector's mistakes. He called for an EU-wide quota to push electric cars, a proposal dismissed by Merkel as too complicated to implement. Commentators said the attacks on the car industry carried a whiff of hypocrisy given both parties' notoriously cosy links with Germany's auto giants over the years. An early August poll for broadcaster ARD found that 57 percent of respondents said they had lost faith in the vaunted car industry. 'Car chancellor'Merkel was dubbed the "car chancellor" in 2013 after she went to bat for the sector and argued against an EU cap on emissions.

Source: The Local August 15, 2017 07:30 UTC