BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - The Greens have reacted with shock to considerations of softening the already adopted EU-wide ban on the sale of new vehicles with combustion engines. "At the urging of the federal government, the EU now wants to overturn the 2035 combustion engine phase-out--CDU and SPD are thus responsible for one of the most climate-damaging and simultaneously most economically hostile decisions in years," said the chairwoman of the Green parliamentary group, Katharina Droge, to the German Press Agency. She described this decision as a grave mistake.

Bad for the Climate and the Automotive Industry

"We will all have to pay the price for an escalating climate crisis," warned the co-chair. The economic consequences of this misjudgment would affect employees in the automotive industry, whose jobs would become more insecure as a result. "The future of mobility is electric, and although Europe is currently lagging behind, we have the opportunity to catch up," Droge said. The growing sales of electric vehicles and the rapid expansion of charging infrastructure show that the market is gaining momentum. "If we squander the current momentum, we will leave the field to China," the Green politician criticized.

Start Date 2035

Representatives of EU member states and the European Parliament had actually agreed in 2022 that new cars in the European Union would no longer be allowed to emit climate-damaging carbon dioxide (CO2) during operation from 2035 onwards. The background is so-called fleet emission limits, which are intended to reduce the CO2 emissions of newly registered cars by 100 percent by 2035.

According to sources within the Commission, this requirement is now set to be abandoned. Emitted greenhouse gases are to be fully compensated by other measures. Exceptions are planned, including for plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles with so-called range extenders, where small combustion engines increase the range. Whether the exceptions will also apply to conventional gasoline and diesel vehicles was initially unclear./abc/DP/stk