Bojan Vrbnjak
From a purely technical point of view, the European Union will not ban the sale of new cars with internal combustion engines from 2035. The aim is only to prevent harmful emissions. This is basically the same thing and also means the end of internal combustion engines. Unless there is an adequate increase in the production of synthetic fuels that do not cause carbon emissions in the next ten years. This does not seem feasible in such a short period of time, which is why the ban has been criticized.
The Italian Minister for the Environment and Energy Security has now joined the critics. He too opposes the ban that the EU is planning for 2035. Automotive News Europe quotes Gilbert Pichetto Fratino as saying that "the ban needs to be changed" as the "ideological vision" has already failed. He even went so far as to say that the plan was downright "absurd" and that Europe now needed a "pragmatic vision". Part of the Italian government wants the sales ban to be reviewed earlier than planned. The Italian Minister of Economy and Production in Italy, Adolfo Urso, wants the regulation to be considered at the beginning of 2026 instead of 2025. "Ideally, things have to change. Otherwise," says Urso, "the European automotive industry may collapse."
Italy demands more freedom
Giorgia Meloni's right-wing government believes member states should be given more freedom to meet targets on the road to CO2 neutrality, rather than forcing all 27 EU countries to sell only electric cars from the middle of the next decade. The transition cannot be made in just ten years, so a more realistic goal would be a gradual transition from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles.
In recent months, most European automakers have adjusted their targets for electric cars and scaled back their ambitious goals for fully electric vehicles. Even Volvo no longer believes that it will be able to stop selling gasoline cars by 2030. Even European Mercedes, Porsche, Bentley and Ford are no longer sure that they will be able to switch to fully electric cars, as they announced. As many countries reduce or eliminate subsidies for electric cars, or have already eliminated them, as in this case, demand for electric vehicles is falling. According to the European Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the market share of fully electric cars in the first six months of this year was 12,5%. Compared to the same period in 2023, this share decreased by 0,4%.
Automakers want people to buy their e-cars instead of internal combustion engines because they risk heavy fines for exceeding fleet emissions targets. These will be even stricter from 2025, so you could say that car manufacturers are in trouble. The stiffer competition brought on by the influx of cheaper Chinese cars certainly isn't helping, although tariffs are slowing things down (no final decision has yet been made on this). Everything that happens in the EU will have a global impact, as some of the biggest car manufacturers are based here.
If the sale of new internal combustion vehicles is banned in the 2035 countries of the euro area from 27, there may be fewer newly developed internal combustion vehicles in other markets. The greatest economies of scale can be achieved by selling the same car or engine in as many countries as possible. If you take Europe out of the equation, the math needs to be repeated.
