The EU Council formally adopted, on Tuesday 28 March, the Interinstitutional Agreement it had reached with the European Parliament on CO2 emission standards for new cars and vans.
Formal adoption of the agreement was delayed by the Swedish Presidency of the EU Council after Germany had indicated, on 27 February, that it would only support the text if the Commission presented a proposal to allow ‘e-fuels’ after 2035 (see EUROPE 13134/1). A delegated act along these lines will be presented by the Commission next autumn (see EUROPE 13150/1), the result of several weeks of negotiations between Berlin and the Commission.
If the text as adopted remains unchanged, new developments could nevertheless occur. In fact, this delegated act could be rejected by the European Parliament (see EUROPE 13150/1), which will have 2 months to give its opinion after publication in the Official Journal of the EU. In such a case, Germany assured, during the negotiations with the Commission, that the latter would follow another path - in particular in the framework of the revision of the regulation planned for 2026 - to meet its requirements.
Italy abstained in the EU Council votes. Rome, which wanted biofuels to be an option under the text as well, had pinned its hopes on the fact that Germany had won on the issue of e-fuels, potentially opening a loophole.
Several sources close to the dossier confirmed that this was not part of the Commission’s plans, which claims that e-fuels could be ‘net-zero’ unlike biofuels.
The text, formally adopted by the European Parliament on 14 February (see EUROPE 13121/13), sets, among other things, the objective of a 100% reduction in CO2 emissions from new cars and vans by 2035, which would mean the end of sales of new vehicles with combustion engines. The text includes an intermediate target, in 2030, setting emission reductions of 55% for new cars and 50% for new commercial vehicles.
See the adopted text: https://aeur.eu/f/63c (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)