New cars must be emission-free from 2035 and cleaner from 2030. Negotiators from the Commission, Council (Member States) and Parliament reached an agreement on this in Brussels tonight that heralds the definitive end of the combustion engine.
New diesels and petrol cars may therefore no longer be sold after 2035. “The industry is ready, consumers want emission-free mobility as soon as possible, so let’s go full throttle,” said Frans Timmermans, the European Commissioner for Climate Change. The deal is part of his plans to make Europe climate neutral by 2050. After the parliament and the European Commission, the member states are now also behind the plans.
Parliament negotiator Jan Huitema (VVD) is also satisfied. “Transport is one of the few sectors in which CO2 emissions continue to rise. In Europe, 27 percent of CO2 emissions come from this, 70 percent from road transport. In order to achieve the climate goals, it is good that something is done about it now.”
Hydrogen
Huitema expects that the fact that new cars will soon have to be fully electric or run on hydrogen will give the industry an enormous boost. Rapid action is needed because passenger cars and vans (to which the agreement also applies) can easily remain on the road for fifteen years. Many car owners do not even want to wait for 2035 but want to buy a clean car earlier. “The fuel that can be saved in this way can be used for trucks and ships, also in development towards a sustainable future,” says Huitema.
He calls the deal good news for consumers, because in many cases electric driving will soon be cheaper than driving on petrol or diesel. He now also expects price cuts for electric cars and a booming second-hand market.
Negotiator on behalf of the Greens, Bas Eickhout, is also happy that the 2035 target has been maintained, which was “a hard battle”, he said tonight. He is also satisfied that the average emissions of new cars must be reduced by 55 percent by 2030 and by 50 percent for vans.
The largest group in the European Parliament, the Christian Democratic EPP, has criticized the agreement. “We get a Havana effect: streets full of old cars because new ones are not yet available or too expensive,” said EVP spokesman Jens Gieseke. According to him, it has not been taken into account at all that all kinds of parts for electric cars are much more difficult to obtain than when Brussels launched the first proposals 2.5 years ago. “Today we are closing the door to other technological possibilities and putting everything on one map. That’s a mistake,” said Gieseke.
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