Since 2035 new cars with diesel and petrol combustion engines will no longer be sold in the European Union. This was established by a proposal made by the European Commission and approved on Wednesday evening by the Strasbourg Parliament. The text aims to make the placing on the EU market of new zero-emission cars and vans, therefore fully electric, mandatory by that year, essentially decreeing the end of internal combustion vehicles. However, an important exception has passed: the new rules do not currently apply to niche manufacturers of up to 10 cars a year. Thus Ferrari and Lamborghini are saved.
The European Parliament splits on the vote against diesel and petrol
The European Parliament, however, voted for the provision in a far from compact way: 339 yes, 249 no and 24 abstentions. And the short circuit was evident: the socialists of the S&D voted together with the two right-wing groups to send the text back to the European Parliament's Environment Commission. There has been a vertical split in the PSE, in the Pd itself and also in the liberals of Renew. The concern of many is that too fast an ecological evolution could damage employment and cause many businesses to close.
The EPP had proposed an amendment which envisaged a reduction in CO2 emissions of 90% instead of 100%, which would have also allowed the use of synthetic fuels, but it was not approved.
Cingolani: "Do we give everyone an electric car?"
The Italian Minister of Ecological Transition, Roberto Cingolani, essentially agreed with the popular amendment: "I think that those who are pursuing electrification do not want synthetic fuels, which decarbonize up to 90 percent and are totally compatible with petrol pumps that we have on our roads and with internal combustion engines. We are the second largest producer of these fuels in the world. In my opinion it could be a solution especially in the transitional phase”. Solution which, however, the European Parliament has rejected.
“If I have an old car – continues Cingolani – and I can't buy an electric or a hybrid one, I keep it because I don't have the money to change it, not because I like to pollute! If the subsidized synthetic fuel (subsidised because otherwise it would cost more) allows me a level of pollution comparable to the best hybrid out there, and I can go on for a few more years, why not do it? But sorry, wasn't the green transition also supposed to be right? Do we really want to say that we give everyone an electric car as a gift? When we know that we still don't have green electricity to recharge it and when we know that, with a total stop to heat engines, we would make ourselves even more dependent on those batteries that are built in just one country (China, ed) and not Is there even the infrastructure to recharge cars?”.
Industrial Union of Turin: "70 jobs at risk"
Giorgio Marsiaj, president of the Industrial Union of Turin, speaks instead of "a very hard blow for the automotive sector: the vote of the European Parliament which bans heat engines from 2035 reaffirms an ideological approach in favor of the electric and serious risk for the Italian and continental automotive supply chain. A choice, that of the European parliamentarians, which does not take into consideration a fundamental and strategic production sector for the European economies and which puts you in serious danger – as Anfia points out and as we have been reiterating for some time – 70 thousand jobs. We join the sector's appeal so that the other Community bodies that have yet to express themselves realize that this is not the path of reasonableness”.
Fim Cisl: "We need an automotive ministerial table"
Ferdinando Uliano, national secretary of the metalworkers' union Fim Cisl, also took the same line: "If we want to avoid very serious repercussions in terms of layoffs and the destruction of a fundamental industrial sector for our country, the Government must now make available to companies in the sector , immediately, the investments of 8 billion allocated with the automotive fund and set up a special scientific committee that directs the policies of advantage in the strategic sectors of the mobility of the future. The incentives for the purchase of sustainable vehicles recently approved by the Italian government for the next three years are necessary but must not dry up the resources essential to accompany the transition phase. We therefore ask for the immediate convening of the automotive ministerial table”.
