EU, Ribera: “No backtracking on stopping diesel and petrol engines from 2035”

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(Finance) – The EU Commission will not back down on the ban on diesel and petrol engines from 2035. “It is not something we are taking into consideration and I would say that it is not something that practically no one is taking into consideration”, said the vice-president of the EU Commission with responsibility for the Clean Transition, Teresa Riberaon the sidelines of his visit to ArcelorMittal in Ghent, Belgium. “The question on the table – he added – is how to accompany the European automotive industry in an ongoing transformation process and in a global industrial race that has been underway for years, maintaining stability on the timing”.

Words with which Ribera also indirectly responds to Giorgia Meloni, according to which EU automotive regulations risk “bringing the sector to its knees”. The game, however, is far from over. And Ribera, in addition to Italy’s pressure, will have to deal with the EPP, which has positions very similar to those of the Italian government. That EPP of which he is also a member Ursula von der Leyen.

In Brussels the dossier on the regulation of zero-emission cars, in the midst of the car crisis, it’s hot. In these hours, contacts between EU institutions and car manufacturers are intensifying to start “as soon as possible” the strategic dialogue on the future of the automotive sector announced by the President of the Commission in her programmatic speech in the Plenary.

If Ribera denied the Commission’s intention to postpone the 2035 target of banning the sale of new internal combustion engine cars, the Commission’s final position could be less trenchant. In Brussels there is indeed talk of a possible compromise: freeze for 2025 the sanctions that will start next year for those who do not comply with the first 15% emissions reduction targets for new vehicles. Avoid heavy fines to car manufacturers – which could weigh up to 15 billion euros – is one of the requests that arrived in Brussels from Italy and the Czech Republic, formalized in a informal document (“non paper”) also supported by Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Poland. In the document, the 7 EU countries ask, first of all, to bring forward the revision foreseen by the regulation to the beginning of 2025 in order to intervene urgently and to create the right conditions to achieve the final objective of 2035. A point on this, on which the Italy is ready to fight to the end, also thanks to the support of the Popolari, who on Wednesday will vote in the assembly on a document quite in line with the Italian one.

“We will work to ensure that the ecological transition goes back to walking hand in hand with economic and social sustainability”, he assured Melonthe. The Italian non-paper should end on Thursday table of the EU Transport Council in which he will participate Matteo Salvini.

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