EU ministers on the ban on internal combustion engines: Excited looks to Germany

The EU Council of Ministers is voting today on the planned ban on new cars with combustion engines from 2035. It is unclear how Germany is positioned, there is a dispute at the traffic light. What does Environment Minister Lemke do?

The EU Commission wants it, as does the European Parliament. An end for new cars with combustion engines from 2035. Today the EU environment ministers are dealing with the increasingly controversial issue.

Germany’s position seemed clear in March: the federal government supported a ban on combustion engines, but then the FDP vetoed it. Even if Germany cannot determine the position of the EU countries on its own, other states will observe closely how Environment Minister Steffi Lemke positions herself in Luxembourg today. “It is likely that others will follow if Berlin does not vote for a ban on new cars with internal combustion engines by 2035,” an EU diplomat recently told the dpa news agency. An opinion shared by other experts.

Resistance also from other EU countries

Several EU countries want to postpone the end of combustion engines by five years to 2040 and support a corresponding push from Italy. Bulgaria and Portugal, for example, but also Romania and Slovakia, and Hungary could also be there.

Should Germany abstain from the traffic light coalition because of the dispute, a temporary failure of the previous plans would be quite possible. Because voting is based on the qualified majority system, states can block the bill if they together represent more than 35 percent of the EU population. If Germany doesn’t say yes, that would be the case. Then the Commission, the EU Parliament and the member states would have to look for a new compromise.

Dispute in the traffic light coalition

The Green Climate and Economics Minister Robert Habeck indicated a willingness to compromise on the combustion issue on Monday without giving any further details: “Europe is a living compromise machine, and we are working on it,” said Habeck. A good solution had to be found for the various “special perspectives” of different EU countries, he explained.

Green Party leader Ricarda Lang pointed out that the SPD, Greens and FDP had agreed on a very clear position in their coalition agreement. “I’m sure that Germany will act within the framework of this coalition agreement,” said Lang. The Greens leader is alluding to a passage in the coalition agreement that is intended to guarantee that vehicles that can be refueled with synthetic fuels, so-called e-fuels, can also be newly registered in the future – a sticking point in the dispute between the FDP and the Greens.

Based on this passage, the FDP calls for voting against a complete ban on combustion engines.

Union against ban, Greenpeace puts pressure on

The Union parties are also building up pressure against a ban. “I appeal to the federal government not to prematurely push technologies out of the market that could become alternatives to electric cars,” said Angelika Niebler, co-chair of the CDU/CSU group in the European Parliament. It is not yet known what leaps in development synthetic fuels might make.

Greenpeace, on the other hand, called for a hard line from Germany and criticized the Greens for their willingness to compromise. “The Greens seem to be giving up any ambition for climate protection in traffic,” said Greenpeace traffic expert Benjamin Stephan of the dpa.

In some countries there has been a phase-out date for combustion engines for some time: Norway, for example, intends to stop selling vehicles with classic gasoline or diesel engines from 2025. Great Britain, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium most recently aimed for the year 2030, France wanted to follow up by 2040 at the latest. Even the huge emerging country of India wants to phase out conventional drive technology in the medium term.