The EU could introduce tougher car emissions tests in the wake of the Volkswagen rigging scandal, senior European officials said.

The German carmaker named company veteran Matthias Mueller as its new chief executive on Friday in an attempt to get to grips with a crisis that its chairman described as “a moral and political disaster”.

The appointment came as Swiss authorities said they were suspending sales of Volkswagen diesel vehicles that could contain devices capable of cheating emissions tests, including Audi, Seat, Skoda and Volkswagen brand vehicles built between 2009 and 2014. They said this could affect 180,000 vehicles.

European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said Volkswagen bosses had to fully come clean about the scandal. “We have to stop fraud, and that’s why we have to get to the bottom of this,” he told German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung in comments published yesterday.

He said the EU could change its laws to introduce stricter emissions tests.

German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks also said the European Commission and member states were considering stricter rules. “We are currently working on new, honest measuring methods in Brussels,” Hendricks told Handelsblatt newspaper in an interview to be published tomorrow.

“We can’t just rely on tests in the lab,” she said, adding future tests should focus more on normal road conditions.

The close relationship between the German government and the country’s car industry has been thrown into the spotlight by the Volkswagen scandal.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, called on Volkswagen to take action to restore public trust in the industry.

“We need a guarantee that cars of German manufacturers are in line with the norms, without manipulation,” he told Der Tagesspiegel in an interview to be published today.

Volkswagen could face $18 billion in fines from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) after it admitted using software in diesel cars to cheat emissions tests.