Germany mandates recall of VW cars with deceptive software

German Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt said on Thursday that the country’s automotive watchdog had ordered Volkswagen to start a mandatory recall of 2.4 million affected cars at the start of 2016. German daily Bild reported earlier that the KBA had rejected a proposal by VW under which owners of the affected diesel cars could voluntarily bring in their cars for fixes.

Meanwhile, Italian police have raided VW offices in Verona and Lamborghini offices in Bologna.

Volkswagen faces possible fines after U.S. authorities discovered it had equipped 482,000 cars with software that disabled emissions controls except when the cars were being tested.

The German plan is expected to be a framework for what VW will need to do throughout Europe, where a few 8 million vehicles had the cheating software. It has been criticised by politicians, investors and consumers for the time it is taking to produce answers.

Shares in the company recovered slightly last week but are still down nearly 20% since the scandal broke in the middle of September.