Eh? They helpedd reduce the Emmisions of the system they were promoting for? Diesel is more CO2 friendly but much more polluting with NOx. This agressive push for a clearly inferior fuel (for this metric) is what raised the NOx emissions. They don't get bonus point for minimising an effect that was caused by that decision in the first place. And there are plenty of studies that show that real-life use of the Cars of whatever Euro-X standard does not match the laboratory results based on which they get those certifications in the first place. And not this was not something only for VW that caused the scandaaal, these tests are done with all the brands and outside of very limitied scenarios all produced more than the standard dictated.