According to the Financial Times, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni lashed out at the EU’s ban on the sale of cars powered by new fossil fuels after 2035, saying it was a “self-destructive” policy and vowed to urge the EU to “correct this choice”.
Giorgia Meloni.
Photo Source: Italian government, Giorgia Meloni, speaking at Confindustria, Italian federation of industrialists, said it was “strategically unwise” for the EU to require the entire EU market to achieve a “forced transition” to “electrification” of new light vehicles within the next decade.
“Green transformation cannot mean destroying thousands of jobs, nor does it mean abolishing the entire internal combustion engine car sector, which creates wealth and jobs,” Giorgia Meloni said.
At the same time, she also lashed out at the “disastrous consequences” of the “Green New deal in Europe” and its “ideological approach”.
Giorgia Meloni said that the EU should have followed the principle of technology neutrality, allowing each EU member state to develop its own strategies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, rather than stipulating a full shift to electric vehicles.
Giorgia Meloni said: “in terms of electric cars, we do not have the raw materials and cannot dominate the value chain of electric vehicles, but we want to defend the European car industry, and I promise to continue our efforts to correct the EU ban on internal combustion engines.
We hope to use all common sense and available technology to choose a path that can reduce pollution emissions and save thousands of jobs at the same time.
” Her fierce criticism comes as Italy, Germany and some Eastern European countries, such as the Czech Republic, which makes auto parts, intensify calls for an urgent review of EU car emission regulations as soon as possible.
EU emissions rules effectively ban the sale of new internal combustion engine cars by 2035.
Both the 2035 ban and the EU’s new emissions rules are the most controversial part of the EU’s ambitious “green new deal” climate policy.
many carmakers and car-producing countries have called for a delay in the internal combustion engine ban or more flexibility in carbon emissions rules, such as allowing the use of carbon-neutral synthetic fuels.
Volker Wissing, Germany’s transport minister and a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, once said that Europe was losing credibility because it could not even achieve its own goals.
While Volker Wissing agrees with the need to set goals, he believes they should be realistic and “can be applied in practice”.
In March 2023, the European Union passed a landmark law requiring that from 2035, all new cars must achieve zero carbon dioxide emissions, thus effectively banning diesel and gasoline vehicles, and from 2030, car carbon dioxide emissions will be 55% lower than in 2021.
Although Giorgia Meloni and her allies have long opposed the ban on internal combustion engines, Italy, Bulgaria and Romania abstained when the European Union launched the vote, while Poland was the only country to vote against it.
The EU move is aimed at speeding up the electrification of the car industry, but a number of carmakers have recently begun to scale back their plans to launch electric vehicles because of weak demand for electric vehicles.
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