Italy, Germany, Poland and Hungary block EU legislation for electric cars
The Council of the European Union has postponed the vote on the ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2035 to a date to be defined. The opposition above all from Italy and Germany is involved: here's why
The presidency of the Council of the European Union, occupied by Sweden since last January 1, has decided to postpone the vote on the emission levels of cars and vans to a later date.
The legislation on the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035 – which the European Parliament approved in mid-February, to encourage the diffusion of electric vehicles and the decarbonisation of transport – was contested above all by Italy and Germany for the its possible impact on the endothermic engine supply chains.
WHAT HAS CHANGED
The approval of the legislation by the Council of the European Union was considered a formality, given that the member states had already reached an agreement on the matter last November. The scenario instead changed following the opposition of the Polish, Bulgarian but above all Italian and German governments: the two nations are important car manufacturers; Germany, then, is the most economically and politically influential country in the bloc.
WHAT HAPPENED
Italy, Poland and Bulgaria said they were against it and Germany, which had asked for adequate compensation on e-fuels, didn't trust them: together they would have made up the blocking minority necessary to reject the regulation. The Swedish presidency, faced with a vote that would have made the Commission tremble, has therefore postponed the file.
GERMANY WANTS E-FUEL FOR TRADITIONAL CARS
A few days ago, Transport Minister Volker Wissing announced that Berlin would not support the car legislation if the European Commission had not provided for an exemption from the registration ban for vehicles powered by e-fuels, a type of synthetic fuel low emissions that can be used in internal combustion engines.
At present, European legislation provides for a 100 percent reduction in emissions from new cars and new commercial vehicles sold from 2035, effectively excluding any alternative to electric.
VON DER LEYEN WILL GO TO GERMANY
On Sunday the president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, should meet with the German government (she is also German, and has been a minister several times under the chancellorship of Angela Merkel) to discuss economic and mobility-related issues.
The German government's position on sustainable mobility, however, is not univocal: Minister Wissing, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party (FDP), supports synthetic fuels such as e-fuel; Environment Minister Steffi Lemke, a member of the Greens, does not want Germany to withdraw its support for European legislation.
ITALY CELEBRATES
Meanwhile, the Italian government is celebrating.
“That's good,” Environment Minister Gilberto Pichetto wrote on Twitter. “The new EU postponement of the decision to stop heat engines to 2035 rightly takes into account the strong resistance of some European countries, with Italy in the front row. Setting up the Regulation is too ideological and not very concrete”.
So good.
The new EU postponement of the decision to stop heat engines to 2035 rightly takes into account the strong resistance of some European countries, with Italy in the front row.
Setting up the Regulation is too ideological and not very concrete.— Gilberto Pichetto (@GPichetto) March 3, 2023
Giorgia Meloni's government opposes the ideology criticized by Pichetto with the principle of technological neutrality, i.e. that approach to ecological transition which invites us to take into consideration all the technologies available for decarbonisation: not only battery-powered electric mobility, in this case , but also biofuels and low-emission synthetic fuels.
ELECTRIC CARS VERSUS SYNTHETIC FUELS?
Since they can circulate in traditional engines, and although they release emissions when burned, fuels of biological and synthetic origin are considered by some analysts to be a technology useful for the immediate reduction of the carbon footprint of transport, at least until the recharging infrastructure necessary for the full diffusion of the electric car.
Critics, on the other hand, interpret the request for exemption for these fuels as a sort of "gift" to the oil & gas industry that produces them (this is the case of Eni in Italy).
However, technologies for electric vehicles are at a more advanced stage of development than synthetic fuels such as e-fuels.
HOW MUCH TRANSPORT COUNTS
The transport sector is responsible for around a quarter of total greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union, which in turn is worth – overall – less than 9 percent of global emissions.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/unione-europea-posticipo-voto-auto-emissioni/ on Fri, 03 Mar 2023 14:45:04 +0000.