EU Commission ignored its own advice before weakening car CO2 rules
Por Jordyn Dahl — Sustainability – POLITICO
BRUSSELS — The European Commission ignored its own advice to maintain a bloc-wide combustion engine ban and instead caved to automakers and powerful national capitals to weaken the rules, according to an internal briefing document obtained by POLITICO.
The EU law to get rid of tailpipe emissions from cars by 2035 — effectively banning combustion engine vehicle sales past that date — was once considered a key part of the European Green Deal. But the Commission last year backtracked and agreed to allow a small number of CO2-emitting engines past that date.
That decision came in the wake of fierce political pressure from the car industry and from Germany and allied capitals, as well as from the center-right European People’s Party, the political family to which Commission President Ursula von der Leyen belongs.
The internal Commission document advising the EU Commission not to change the rules was prepared ahead of a January 2025 meeting between Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra and representatives of car lobby ACEA and car parts supplier association CLEPA.
It warned that it was too early to call the 2035 target unachievable, despite arguments from European carmakers that they needed relief because of sluggish electric vehicle sales.
The document also cautioned that changing the policy would send a negative signal to companies that had invested billions in ramping up EV production.
“It is premature and speculative to draw any conclusion on specific compliance situations,” said the document prepared by analysts with the Directorate General for Climate Action. “For our future industrial competitiveness, it is extremely important to continue providing certainty to the market and investors.”
The briefing paper was obtained by climate investigations NGO Aria through a freedom of information request.
It lands amid ongoing political negotiations over whether the EU should further loosen car CO2 rules. The clash reflects a broader argument over the future of Europe’s auto industry: whether weakening climate rules will help the EU’s struggling carmakers compete, or make it harder for them to catch up with China in the global shift to electric vehicles.
The Commission declined to respond, saying it does not comment on internal documents or internal preparatory decisions.
Slashing emissions
The EU passed the de facto combustion engine ban in 2023, requiring a 100% reduction in tailpipe emissions from new cars by 2035.
A review of the regulation was set for 2026, but automakers and their suppliers lobbied hard for the Commission to move the review to 2025, arguing that EV sales had stalled in 2024, which would make the legislation’s targets impossible to meet.
The companies said they risked paying €15 billion in fines for failing to meet the 2025 target, which stipulated that carmakers reduce emissions by 15 percent in 2025 from a 2021 baseline or be fined €95 per gram of CO2 per kilometer emitted above the target for each noncompliant vehicle sold in the bloc.
But DG CLIMA was skeptical of those claims.
“This amount claimed by the industry represents the very unlikely case of ‘no action’ and absolutely no improvement from any of the manufacturers,” it wrote in the briefing document.
DG CLIMA also pointed to growing EV sales and argued that electrification was crucial to Europe’s global competitiveness.
“The automotive market is global, and recent developments show that the future competitiveness of industry on the global stage is linked to new powertrain technologies (electric),” the note said.
Ahead of the Hoekstra meeting, DG CLIMA dismissed the plea for leniency, writing in the note that “we should stick to” the initial timeline.
Automotive analysts and green groups agreed, saying European carmakers would meet the 2025 targets thanks to new all-electric and hybrid models expected to hit the market that year.
They were proven correct. EV sales surged 30% in 2025, growing to 1.88 million, ACEA data showed.
However, the DG CLIMA document did not sway the Commission, as it gave way to the combined pressure from member countries — led by Germany and including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Slovakia — as well as the car industry to modify the 2035 law.
Hoekstra’s meeting was part of a longer process led by von der Leyen and was a major priority for the Commission president. She hosted the CEOs of Europe’s automakers and suppliers in two strategic dialogues.
In the first dialogue, held two weeks after DG CLIMA sent its internal memo, von der Leyen told the group that she would move the legislation’s review forward to 2025, a participant told POLITICO.
Those discussions laid the groundwork for her Automotive Action Plan presented in March 2025. In December 2025, the Commission proposed watering down the EU ban.
Under the proposal, instead of reducing tailpipe emissions from new vehicles by 100 percent by 2035, automakers would now only have to lower them by 90 percent from 2021 levels. Carmakers would have to compensate for the remaining emissions through the use of low-carbon steel, e-fuels or biofuels.
That proposal is now being debated by EU institutions.
The pressure hasn’t stopped. Automakers and their political allies are now lobbying to further weaken the rules as competition from Chinese carmakers intensifies and European manufacturers such as Volkswagen cut jobs and close factories.
The EPP, which campaigned on overturning the ban, is the lead negotiator on the issue in the European Parliament. Its draft report goes even further than industry demands, effectively lowering the targets to a 73% emissions cut by giving larger offsets through alternative fuels and green steel.
That’s dismaying climate campaigners.
The EPP proposal “combines the worst ideas of the auto, oil and biofuel lobbies. The result is a law where carmakers could comply without selling a single electric car in 2035,” said William Todts, executive director of green NGO Transport & Environment.
Fonte: Sustainability – POLITICO
