Italy, Germany join carmakers in call to rethink internal combustion engine ban

Italy and Germany are mustering support from other EU members for a call to relax EU targets for reducing car CO2 emissions and reconsider a 2035 ban on the sale of petrol and diesel models, Italian Industry Minister Adolfo Urso said in Brussels Wednesday evening.

It was now “certain” that the ban – actually a zero limit on tailpipe emissions – would not be achieved, and the two countries plan to propose at an EU Council summit Thursday that a review clause in the legislation be brought forward from the end of 2026 to early 2025, Urso said.

Echoing recent warnings from manufacturers, Urso said Europe’s car industry had “collapsed” and predicted “tens of thousands” of redundancies in the sector unless the EU changed course.

The EU had two choices, the Italian minister said: firstly, to keep the target and create the conditions to allow the car industry to achieve it – an approach favoured by German economy minister Robert Habeck. “Or if we fail to do all this we just have to…postpone the objectives,” he said.

Urso's statements came three months after Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni dismissed the 2035 ban as “ideological madness,” and just days after an appeal from the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA), which reacted to a dip in e-car sales last week by going public with a call to postpone the application of more stringent emissions limits.

The influential Brussels-based group – whose members include BMW, Ford, Renault, Volkswagen and Volvo – warned on 19 August that new car registrations fell below 644,000 in August, a more than 18% drop compared to the same month in 2023. Sales of electric cars saw the largest proportional drop, with market share falling by almost a third from the 21% recorded last year.

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