Italy’s Urso on 2035 zero Co2 emissions quest to get support for early review of cars rules
Italy’s Minister for Enterprises, Adolfo Urso, will seek a broad alliance with other industry ministers on Thursday (26 September) to move the review of car reduction targets forward and shield the EU’s 2035 zero-Co2 emissions goal.
Talking to reporters after meeting MEPs in Brussels, Urso said he wants to build member states’ consensus to table a so-called ‘non-paper’—an informal policy proposal—asking the European Commission to bring forward the planned 2026 revision of the bloc’s car emissions rules to the first half of next year.
“[This] would allow us to reach the best possible shared decisions – with the preferred scenario being to keep the 2035 target, but also to create the necessary conditions to meet that objective,” Urso said.
“[We have] the absolute certainty we can’t leave companies and consumers hanging for another two years – especially in light of recent data on both car production having plummeted and electric car sales having markedly declined,” he said.
“We are by now certain that with this review timeline, we won’t achieve the objectives we have established for 2035 – so we must accelerate [on it],” he said.
Between 2019 and 2023, the EU approved emission reduction targets for cars that require automakers to cut new cars’ emissions by 15% by 2025, compared to 2021 levels, and by 100% in 2035.
However, the European automotive industry has been struggling to keep up with the shift to electric vehicles, faced with dire competition from China and lagging investment and infrastructure.
The effects of such measures from global competitors “are such that,” the minister said, “for Europe to delay [its decisions] for another two years, it would mean plunging into darkness.”
Embracing stricter targets in exchange for ‘tech neutrality’
The Italian minister (Fratelli d’Italia-ECR) thus signalled an unexpected shift of his country’s position towards upholding the objective of phasing out all new gasoline cars by 2035 – which his party’s leader, Giorgia Meloni, had repeatedly rebuked.
“We would want to pursue this route” of 100% emission reduction by 2035, Urso said, “as it is also the one on which there could be broader convergence,” he said, pointing to bilateral talks he recently held with his counterparties from Spain, Czechia and Austria – and most notably, from Germany.
The official, in fact, hinted to an informal agreement he would have reached with German Economy Minister Robert Habeck—a fierce supporter of the 2035 target—on Wednesday, which would also explain Italy’s unexpected willingness to uphold it.
While the Italian ministry pre-announced the early review request earlier this week, Urso is now looking to tie it in with three other demands around the EU’s car emission reduction rules. The first would ask EU policymakers to add more clarity and flexibility on the point of so-called ‘technological neutrality’ (i.e., allowing for a broader range of technologies to reach zero-CO2 targets).
“We absolutely need to tackle the green transition challenge with a clear vision for [technological] neutrality, to leverage all the technologies available to us – including, but not limited to, biofuels and hydrogen,” Urso said.
This would, in practice, re-open a thorny political debate on allowing cars to partly continue operating on combustion engines—one of the centrepieces of EU parties’ political campaigns ahead of the past EU elections in June—beyond 2035, as long as traditional gasoline is replaced with climate-neutral biofuels or e-fuels.
Urso cited what former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi outlined earlier this month in his competitiveness report – which he said clearly denounced EU frameworks for “not having taken sufficiently into account the issue of technological neutrality.”
On this, the Italian minister said Habeck would have signalled he was “open to the possibility [of technological neutrality]” as long as the 2035 goal—which acts as a de facto ban on new petrol and diesel cars after that date—would be guaranteed.
Contacted by Euractiv, however, a spokesperson of Habeck’s ministry said they could not confirm the statement.
Urso’s conditions
The second ask would be to commit to more public investment to “greening” European economies.
“We need common EU resources to complement national investments and to work as a strong incentive and stimulus for private investment,” Urso said, pointing to Draghi’s warning that Europe’s additional annual investment needs—which the former central banker saw in the area of EUR800 billion—can not be met through private funding alone.
Thirdly, Urso’s proposals would seek to increase the bloc’s strategic autonomy goals, especially in the area of critical raw materials.
He said all EU green transition targets needed to revolve around “the principle of strategic autonomy and economic security”, – which he said should drive Europe towards onshoring most of the value chain for critical raw materials that will enable green technologies – especially by boosting domestic capacity for extraction and refinement.
From that standpoint, the 2035 emission-free target would depend, in Urso’s proposals, on whether the bloc can build that capacity over the next decade – and thereby ramp up the “production of electric batteries to guarantee that by that date we really can consider Europe fully free from critical dependencies,” Urso said.
“If we can’t guarantee critical [secure] raw material value chains, however,” the minister added, “if we don’t meet those thee conditions, and we won’t therefore be able to guarantee the 2035 target, then we’ll have to shift to a subordinate option – which is not the one we want – which is the postponement of the 2035 target,” he said.
Read more with Euractiv
