EU ministers to approve vehicle emissions law after deal with Germany
EU ministers are expected to approve a draft law on emissions standards for cars on Tuesday, after reaching a deal with Germany over the weekend that ended a damaging row over a key part of Europe’s green deal.
Pascal Canfin, a French centrist MEP who chairs the European parliament’s environment committee, said an EU law that all cars sold from 2035 must produce zero emissions “will be voted unchanged, including by Germany” on Tuesday.
Diplomats are expected later on Monday to approve the compromise agreed between Berlin and Brussels over the weekend, which will allow some combustion engines if they use so-called climate neutral e-fuels.
The row blew up after Germany’s Free Democratic party, a member of the three-way governing coalition, withdrew support from an EU plan to ban the sale of new cars powered by internal combustion from 2035 without stronger guarantees for e-fuels.
After going back on a deal agreed between EU ministers and the European parliament last October, the German government secured further concessions over the future use of e-fuels, which are not yet commercially available.
Germany’s transport minister, Volker Wissing, said: “Vehicles with internal combustion engines can still be newly registered after 2035 if they fill up exclusively with CO2-neutral fuels.”
The European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans tweeted that after the agreement with Germany, the commission would follow up “swiftly with the necessary legal steps” to implement what had been agreed and get the regulation adopted “as swiftly as possible”.
The dispute was a sign of growing tensions about the EU’s green deal, a set of laws intended to ensure Europe achieves net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Berlin’s U-turn on a done deal also
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