STUTTGART, Germany -

Millions of vehicles in the U.S. and Canada have been recalled because of the Takata airbag saga, plus a wide array of other issues.

Now Daimler made the move to recall more than 3 million vehicles in Europe to fix emission issues stemming from the diesel engine in certain Mercedes-Benz models.

The Daimler board of management on Tuesday approved a comprehensive plan for diesel engines with the objective of investing about 220 million euros. The plan comprises a substantial expansion of the current service action for vehicles in customers’ hands as well as a rapid market launch of a completely new diesel engine family.

Since March, Mercedes-Benz has offered its customers of compact-class cars an improvement in NOx emissions for one engine version. The automaker indicated approximately 45 percent of those vehicle have been updated. A voluntary service action is also being carried out for V-Class customers — with approximately 75 percent of the vehicles in Germany.

In order to effectively improve the emissions of additional model series, Daimler decided to extend the service action to include more than three million Mercedes-Benz vehicles. For this purpose, the company’s engineers are making use of latest knowledge gained during the development of the new family of diesel engines.

The measures to be taken for nearly all EU5 and EU6 vehicles in Europe will be carried out in close cooperation with the German regulatory authorities, according to a news release from Daimler.

The company emphasized that the service actions involve no costs for the customers. The implementation of the measures will be starting in the next weeks. Due to the large number of vehicles, this will continue over a longer period of time.

“The public debate about diesel engines is creating uncertainty — especially for our customers. We have therefore decided on additional measures to reassure drivers of diesel cars and to strengthen confidence in diesel technology,” said Dieter Zetsche, chairman of the board of management of Daimler AG and head of Mercedes-Benz Cars.

“We are convinced that diesel engines will continue to be a fixed element of the drive-system mix, not least due to their low CO2 emissions,” Zetsche added.